Poetry In Motion (Book Review)

"Tony Brooks is the greatest unknown racing driver there has ever been." --Stirling Moss.

Moss ought to know: he raced with and against Brooks for seven years.  At age 81 (next month), Brooks finally got around to his autobiography in 2012.  He got his start in car racing because his parents wanted him to stop haring around on public roads on his 650 c.c. Triumph Thunderbird bike.  His mother traded her MG TC for a Healey Silverstone, which Tony prepared for club racing.  He quickly earned a reputation as a fast, "safe pair of hands," which earned him guest drives in faster sports cars.

Tony Brooks (left) with Stirling Moss after they co-drove a Vanwall to victory in the 1957 British Grand Prix.  This
was Brooks's first victory in a major international race.  1957 was the last year when drivers could share a car and
split the World Driving Championship points won by its finishing position.  The Vanwall had inboard rear disc
brakes, the pad dust of which was sucked into and through the cockpit.  Thus the grimy faces except where covered
by goggles and helmets.  "We didn't know about the dangers of asbestos," says Brooks.

Brooks's first big break came in 1955, three years after he started racing, when Aston Martin retained him to drive the DB3S for a season--for a bit over $400!  At the time, he says, this was an average monthly wage in England.  Drivers shared in team prize money, but you didn't make the big bucks by turning pro.  An exception, Brooks later learned, was Moss, who already had a reputation and an agent.  Aston Martin paid Moss a retainer of $7000+, and he cleared over $13,000 driving Astons on a limited schedule in 1955 (he drove sports cars for Mercedes in most of the major races, as well as their W-196 GP car).

Aston Martin DB3S at Sebring, 1955.  While it did not have the power of Mercedes, Jaguar, and Ferrari, the DB3S was
a reliable and sweet-handling car.  With John Wyer's careful and strategic team management,  DB3S's finished well and
were in with a chance to win if the marquee marques faltered.

Brooks has no testimony to add to the extensive literature about the appalling crash at LeMans in 1955.
But he documents top speeds on the 4-mile Mulsanne straight.  Not until the Ford GT-40, ten years later, was the 300 SLR significantly surpassed:

182 m.p.h.  Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR (3.0 liters)
176 m.p.h.  Ferrari 410 S (4.9 liters)
174 m.p.h.  Jaguar D-Type (3.4 liters)
156 m.p.h.  Aston Martin DB3S (3.0 liters)

In 1956, Brooks drove for BRM in Formula 1 and Aston Martin again in sports cars.  BRM was a disaster as a team and Aston Martin was not much better for him personally, although the team had a good season.  The most noteworthy event was the appearance of Aston's DBR1, the replacement for the DB3S.  It would go on to great things over the next three years.  Brooks was captivated by the Nurburgring and Spa-Francorchamps in his first drives there.  He has interesting things to say about Peter Collins, Juan Fangio, Mike Hawthorn, and Stirling Moss as he got to know them and their driving styles better.

Brooks was on the Aston Martin sports car team and the Vanwall Formula 1 team in 1957.  He won the Nurburgring 1000 km in the Aston DBR1 which was 38 seconds faster than the DB3S had been.  Brooks credited its speed to the DBR1 being superb in the 'Ring's swoopy transitions.  In those days of 10-11 minute laps, it took 7.5 hours to complete 1000 km (of which the lead driver drove 67%).  He also won the Spa 3-hour race.  In pursuing him, Olivier Gendebien lapped at 126 m.p.h. in a 4.1 liter Ferrari.  Compare this with the Porsche 917's best lap of 162 m.p.h. and you can see that the old-timers were not hanging about on those skinny tires.

Above and below: the Aston Martin DBR1 announced its arrival as a fully-developed 3-liter race car by placing 1-2
at Spa-Francorchamps in 1957 and winning the Nurburgring 1000 km three years in a row ('57, '58,' and '59), and
LeMans in '59.   Pilote would not disagree with what seems to be the consensus in the U.K., that the DBR1 was the
best-looking racing sports car that Britain produced.

At the end of the 1957 season Brooks treated himself to an Aston Martin DB2/4 like this one.  His was black too, with
a silver top and an oxblood leather interior.  Yummy.

Brooks points out something that had not occurred to me: that the change in Formula 1 regulations for 1958-1960 were tailor-made for the emergence of rear-engine cars.  Alcohol blend fuel was replaced with gasoline.  Race distance was reduced from 500 to 300 kilometers.  This allowed "boutique" car constructors to use the commercially available Coventry Climax engine and carry 40% less fuel--in a saddle tank over the driver's legs.  The curve of Cooper race cars "growing up" from 500 c.c. club racers crossed the curve of Formula 1 cars downsizing.  The intersection was the 2.5-liter normally aspirated gasoline engine.  All John Cooper needed was another half liter from Coventry Climax, and all Colin Chapman needed was to ask himself "how do I build a better Cooper?"

Brooks even speculates that the change may have accelerated Juan Fangio's retirement, although he was already 46 years old.  Fangio's racecraft was legendary: his ability to suss out other drivers' weaknessess and to conserve his own tires and brakes.  These skills became far less useful in a 2-hour, 180-mile sprint.

Peter Collins (Ferrari Dino 246) chases Tony Brooks (Vanwall) through Eau Rouge in the 1958 Belgian Grand Prix.  It
was Brooks's first solo Grand Prix victory (Collins was DNF).  Brooks preferred to waltz his cars through a series of fast
bends to outbraking maneuvers.  He loved the "four wheel drift" illustrated by both cars here, where an understeering
car goes through a corner with all four tires operating at significant slip angles, with the attitude of the car controlled
by the throttle.  He was noted for his quickness on fast courses, resulting from a smooth style more than banzai moves.

When Vanwall retired from Grand Prix racing, Brooks was recruited by Ferrari for 1959.  As his 4-year contract with Aston Martin had expired too, he agreed to drive sports cars for Ferrari as well.  Like most others at the time, he loved Ferrari's engines and gearboxes: free-revving, powerful, and silky smooth.  But Ferraris understeered, which cost them time in the corners.  Brooks found the Dino easier to drive than a Vanwall (he could "drift" it) but slower.  At the Nurburgring 1000 km sports car race, his 250 Testa Rossa came third behind Moss's Aston Martin DBR1--which won the race for the third year in a row.  Fifty years on, Brooks's fantasy racing sports car is a Ferrari 250 TR power train in an Aston Martin DBR1 chassis.

In 1959 the German Grand Prix was moved from the Nurburgring to Avus, in Berlin.  Avus was a dumb and dangerous course: two 2.5 mile stretches of Autobahn (separated by 17 feet with closing speeds of 340 m.p.h.), with a hairpin bend at one and and a high-speed brick banking at the other.  But the banking was tighter than the cars' top speed, so they had to be "driven" around it.  The venue was changed because the promoters could not make enough money at the Nurburgring.  (It was changed back after this one race.)  So the current move in U.S. road racing, from "legitimate" road circuits to dumb street courses in major cities, which Pilote decries, is no new thing.  And the reason for it is the same.

Above and below: Tony Brooks in the Ferrari Dino 246/256 in 1959 and 2008.  He won at Reims and Avus for Ferrari
but finished third in the WDC behind Jack Brabham and Stirling Moss in Coopers.  The rear engine revolution had
begun.  And, surprisingly for Ferrari, the Dino had reliability problems in 1959 that it had not suffered the year before.

Brook's first child was born at the end of 1959, and he decided to retire from full-time racing.  Although he'd received his degree in dentistry in 1957, he chose not to join his father's practice.  Instead, he opened a car dealership which would give him more flexibility to race part time, in Formula 1 only.     But he made three bad career moves in a row, the first of which was to leave Ferrari (who wanted him to race sports cars as well as GP).  Tony Vandervell promised a new rear engine Vanwall for 1960, which never materialized.  Brooks raced privately entered Coopers in 1960 with minimal success.  BRM promised their own V-8 in a rear engine car for 1961.  The engine wasn't ready in time and the car was overweight.  He found the new 1.5 liter cars unchallenging to drive, "oversized go-karts," and BRM as dysfunctional as they had been six years earlier.  After a podium finish at the end of 1961, he retired from racing--period--and walked away.

I have a weakness for biographies of English racing drivers who came up in Postwar Austerity Britain:

Stirling Moss, Tony Brooks, and Chris Nixon's excellent dual biography of Mike Hawthorn and Peter Collins, Mon Ami Mate.  The English club racing scene was so different from the States, with oddball cars, eccentric drivers, and its emphasis on sportsmanship.  Not that Americans like Phil Hill, Dan Gurney, and Richie Ginther were dirty drivers--far from it.  (Brooks himself has nothing but praise for the Americans, and is far more critical of the racing tactics of Jean Behra, Wolfgang Von Trips, and Graham Hill.)  But individualistic ambition was never far below the surface in the States.  Brits at least tried to disguise it with cameraderie.  And they did have a joint project, of sorts.  British marques were also-rans in the interwar period.  Among English drivers, only Dick Seaman achieved front-rank international status.  After the war, English drivers and boutique manufacturers were determined to make their mark in FIA racing.  And they did.

The tone and approach of European biographers is different, and more interesting.  The American racing biographies I've read are fact-packed, and full of hero-worship.  "He did this, and then he did that, and isn't he amazing?"  The English and continental stuff is written at a much more personal level, and wanders down the byways of road trips, continental tourist notes, and personal opinions tossed off as an aside.  You get a much better sense of the times, the people, the cars, and the places.  I had high hopes for Poetry In Motion, and was not disappointed.

Two other anciens pilotes who survived road racing's most dangerous era: Stirling Moss gives Phil Hill a Lap of
Honor at Goodwood in an Aston Martin DBR1.  Toward the end of his life, Hill could not drive because of his
Parkinson's Disease.  In the 1950's and early 1960's, Formula 1 racers routinely drove front-rank sports cars in
major international events.  Brooks and Moss won the Nurburgring 1000Km race three years in a row in the
DBR1, although they never co-drove.  Hill couldn't catch them.  But he had a much better record in endurance
racing, winning LeMans three times, and Sebring in 1959, with Olivier Gendebien in Ferrari 250 Testa Rossas.
All three won consistently in Grand Prix racing in the order they "came up:" Moss, Brooks, and Hill.