Somehow, it’s rather appropriate that the crowd enjoying the bank-holiday sunshine at the Brooklands Museum should be oblivious to a truly outstanding grand prix driver heading towards our lunch in the clubhouse.

Tony Brooks has been described by his great rival and friend, Sir Stirling Moss, as “The greatest ‘little-known’ driver of all time.”

How else could you sum up a driver who has won at Spa, the Nurburgring Nordschleife and Monza; a man with a start-to-win ratio of 26% while racing for Connaught, Vanwall and Ferrari, yet who is so rarely mentioned?

Modesty has been a hallmark of Tony Brooks since he drove a Connaught to victory in Sicily to produce the first win for a British car and driver abroad in 31 years. Imagine if it happened now; in 1955, it barely got a mention. And nearly 60 years on, he still melts into the background. I can’t wait to shine a spotlight on this quiet hero… 

Maurice Hamilton interviewing Tony Brooks in 2014

Photo by: Drew Gibson

Maurice Hamilton: Your start in F1 was unorthodox. You were a dental student, you’d been racing at Goodwood and places like that, and you got a call asking if you’d like to race in a grand prix [the 1955 non-championship Syracuse GP]. That sort of thing is hard to grasp these days. Were you surprised? 

Tony Brooks: Well, yes; very surprised because I’d never even sat in a Formula 1 car, let alone driven one. The only thing that reduced the surprise slightly is I had driven a works Connaught sportscar a few weeks before. So I presumed they were reasonably happy with that.

MH: Was your priority to qualify as a dentist?

TB: Definitely. In no way did I regard motor racing as a long-term, or even medium-term way of earning a living. It was so dangerous then that you couldn’t think of that seriously. It was always my intention to finish my qualifications so I had a good means of earning a living.

MH: The danger element, as you say, was very evident then. Did that not concern you?

TB: Well, you either accepted the risk or you didn’t. But the point is, I never psyched myself up. I was fortunately blessed with a reasonable amount of natural ability and I always drove within that. I never frightened myself as a result of something I did.

MH: You obviously took a great deal of pleasure from being able to control a car, judging by the numerous pictures of you in a four-wheel drift.

TB: I found this fantastic sensation of driving a car on the limit of adhesion, trying to balance it with the mere caress of the steering wheel and the accelerator. To me it was literally poetry in motion, which is why I chose that expression for the title of my book [Tony’s autobiography Poetry In Motion was published in 2012].

MH: OK, I understand that. But it couldn’t have been a massive amount of help when you’d go to a circuit you had never seen before, drive a car you had never raced – and win!

TB: I don’t want to flog this, but driving came naturally to me. I drove to the limit of my capability and enjoyed it. But I had no idea what the actual level of that ability was; you can’t judge that until you’re up against the top drivers. To everybody’s surprise, not least myself, I won.

MH: I was fascinated by what happened after you had won. There you were, the hero of the moment but also trying to be a dentist – and you’d lost a front tooth!

Tony Brooks celebrates victory at the 1958 German GP, the third of his six career F1 wins

Photo by: Motorsport Images

TB: [Laughs] Yes, not an ideal situation. I’d been trying to learn the circuit the best I could on a scooter because, of course, we had no cars. I’d done so many miles on the Vespa, twisting the grip, that it had rubbed the inside of my thumb and forefinger. It got to the point where it was so sore, I had to put a handkerchief on it.

Winning the race was obviously a new experience for me and all I wanted to do was escape back to my hotel and have a nice shower. I was being followed by crowds who, I have to say, were very magnanimous and enthusiastic, considering they had gone there to see Maserati win! I was surrounded by these people as I got on the scooter while, at the same time, trying to put the handkerchief round my injured hand. To do that, I had to use my teeth to pull one end of the handkerchief and tighten it. I had a temporary crown at the front and it was not up to a rather strong pull from a handkerchief. It came out – and fell on the floor. So you had the winner of the race surrounded by excited Sicilians while he grovelled around on the ground looking for his tooth. All I could see were these rather smart casual boots the Sicilians were wearing.

I couldn’t find the tooth. It’s bad enough for anybody to lose a central incisor; even worse for a dental student. I was dreading the prizegiving. But I was very lucky in that, being a belt and braces man, I’d kept the previous temporary crown in my baggage and managed to pop it on. But I didn’t have any cement to hold it in place, so it was a question of this Englishman having to demonstrate the stiff upper lip to try to keep his central incisor in place, and also mumble a few words at the prizegiving; a tricky exercise.

MH: You can imagine, if that happened to Lewis Hamilton or Jenson Button now, it would be front-page news. But things were very different then, weren’t they? Here we had a situation where a British driver had won what would have been termed a ‘continental grand prix’ in a British car. A big story. Did anyone pay any attention when you got back home?

TB: No, not really. I think we got the odd paragraph here and there in the national newspapers. Motor racing was nowhere in terms of public perception, so it got very little coverage.

MH: Extraordinary, when you consider what you’d achieved. In terms of your career, however, it put the motor racing spotlight on you.

TB: I was spoiled for choice after winning at Syracuse. Connaught wanted me to stay with them, Rob Walker [later to become entrant for Stirling Moss] was interested, as were BRM. Connaught were a great team, but unfortunately they lacked financial backing and were underpowered compared with the competition because they used a pre-war engine that had been bored out to two-and-a-half litres. Of course, when you stretch something to the limit, you undermine your reliability. BRM had the money and, on paper, seemed to be the best prospect of producing a grand-prix-winning car. But we all make mistakes, some mistakes bigger than others. The BRM was pathetic. Totally unreliable; didn’t hold the road.

MH: Before we discuss the BRM’s shortcomings, can I clarify that you were still studying for your dental exams?

TB: Yes, I qualified in December 1956. That was a good thing because I was more concerned about not slipping behind with my studies than dealing with what was involved in motor racing. I’m not saying I wasn’t totally committed to motor racing but my studies were probably a good distraction. If you didn’t pass the exams, you could lose a year and have to do it all over again. There was a lot at stake if you let it slip.

MH: Were you being paid to drive the BRM? I only ask because, if so, was the rate of pay not sufficient to make you think: ‘Right, forget everything else; I want to be an F1 driver?’

TB: Oh no, it wouldn’t be good enough. In any case, I wouldn’t have done that because nobody with any sense in those days would have regarded motor racing as a way to earn a living. I never intended to make motor racing my career.

Brooks's BRM P25 burns after he crashed at the 1956 British GP

Photo by: Motorsport Images

MH: Talking about the hazards of racing in those days, you experienced that first hand with BRM and were
very fortunate to get away with it during the 1956 British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

TB: The accelerator linkage broke so I brought the BRM into the pits for repairs and lost umpteen laps. I was out of the race in terms of getting a decent place. I rejoined and, still very much a new boy in F1, I thought: ‘If I can’t finish up anywhere decent, at least I’d better demonstrate that I know how to drive a grand prix car.’ The way things had turned out, this was my first world championship grand prix.

I noticed straight away that the accelerator was sticking. They’d not done a complete job and I should have brought it back in. I had been going through Abbey Curve flat without any problem but, while I’d been in the pits, a lot more oil and rubber had been put down. So, I was drifting the car – as much as you could drift that BRM – through Abbey Curve on the correct line and at the correct speed, but because of the rubber and oil I needed a quick lift off the throttle and down again. When I lifted off, it didn’t happen. The car ran wide out of the corner and, with any decent car such as a 250F Maserati, you’d have run on the grass for 50 yards or so and edged back onto the circuit. But the BRM spun, finished up on the other side of the circuit then flipped over, but on the grass. I think it hit the banking; I wasn’t taking an awful lot of notice at the time. I was thrown out. I was very lucky – the car deposited me nicely on the grass verge rather than the macadam. Then the car set fire to itself which, as I’ve said many times, was the only reasonable thing it could do.

MH: The following year, 1957, you’ve taken another big step, this time with Vanwall, the domain of industrialist Tony Vandervell. Did you feel this was a team going somewhere?

TB: Indeed. I believe that a grand prix team has to have an autocrat. Tony Vandervell was a committed person. He called the shots and paid the money. Like everyone else, he made some mistakes, but he very quickly put them right. He was very straightforward: I got on well with Tony. The success of Vanwall was down to him.

MH: It was such a nice looking car with a lot of aerodynamic thought put into it – which was quite unusual then, wasn’t it?

TB: People didn’t realise the part aerodynamics could play. They thought aerodynamics were more a question of how fast a car went in a straight line, not how it affected the road holding; that was not appreciated at that time.

MH: Was it a tricky car to drive?

TB: Yes, it was hard work. But I won’t knock a car that won the world manufacturers’ [constructors’] championship in 1958, and beat Ferrari, Maserati and so on. It was the complete opposite of a 250F Maserati, which would say to the driver: ‘Please four-wheel drift me.’ The Vanwall didn’t say that; it would be much happier cornering closer to a geometrical line. We did drift it, but it was hard work. In the end, whatever you may think about driving the car, it’s the results that count, isn’t it?

MH: Exactly. I think it’s fair to say that a grand prix car shouldn’t necessarily be easy to drive.

TB: That’s right. Front-engine cars were not easy to drive but the balance of the 250F Maserati was such that it encouraged people to have a go.

Brooks fought for the F1 title in 1958 and 1959 but fate and principles denied him on both occasions

Photo by: Motorsport Images

MH: There are two things connected with 1957 I’d like to chat about. They’re both related – even though one occurred at Le Mans and the other happened a few weeks later at the British GP. You had an accident while you were driving an Aston Martin, and this was significant because it would affect how you approached racing and your thinking. Then you went on to share the winning Vanwall with Stirling Moss at Aintree. First, tell me what actually happened at Le Mans. The car was stuck in gear and you thought you could get it out?

TB: Yes, that’s right. It was locked in fourth gear. This had also happened to me at Spa, but I’d managed to win that race nevertheless; I’d managed to free it. That’s why I thought I could do the same thing when it happened again at Le Mans. Noel Cunningham-Reid brought in the car some time after midnight and he said it was stuck in fourth gear. I thought: ‘Well, we’re lying second, we don’t want to lose time, so I’ll have a go at getting it out.’

I managed to slip the clutch and get out of the pits. I took the first opportunity to try to apply the system which had worked at Spa. And the first opportunity was not really a long enough straight; I should have waited for Mulsanne, but this was the short straight between the Esses and Tertre Rouge. I was accelerating and then suddenly taking my foot off the accelerator, loading the gearbox with acceleration and then de-loading it hoping that would help the gear lever pop out – as it had done before.

And, of course, I was doing the first thing you’re told not to do when you learn to drive, and that is looking down at the gear lever. So I was monkeying about with this gear lever, looked up and discovered I’d passed my braking point.

I was going too quick for the corner and the second mistake was to think I could put the car into a four-wheel drift and get it round the corner; I was on a perfectly good line. But I needed about another 10 feet of grass on the exit to be able to go off and come back again. Unfortunately, the sand came right down to the road. The car started to run up the sand bank, got to the top and flipped over, trapping me beneath the rear of the car. I was trapped in the cockpit and just waiting for the next car to come round. It seemed like it was a choice of either cremation or simply being run over.

MH: You’d just pitted, so was it full of fuel?

TB: Oh yes, it was. Absolutely full. I could smell it. The chap who came round next – a very nice bloke, dear old Umberto Maglioli – he’d seen the back of my car was sticking out and into the road. So he came round the corner and obviously didn’t use the full width of the corner. He just hit the back of the Aston Martin and carried on. But he had done just enough to take the weight off me and allow me to scramble up the sand bank and into the arms of the marshal – who I think was far more astonished than I was.

So again, I was very, very lucky. It was a result of these two incidents – the BRM at Silverstone and the Aston Martin at Le Mans – that I made an absolutely committed resolution not to try to drive substandard cars at competitive speeds. Racing was dangerous enough without loading the dice against yourself by trying to race cars that weren’t fit to race. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t finish a race with a car, making the best use of it I could, but not trying to race it to the limit because it was no longer fit.

I would never retire just because of, I don’t know, you have the mudguards rattling or something like that. I would do the best with what the car was capable of doing, but I wouldn’t try to do something beyond what I thought was the capability of the car in that mechanical condition. That was my firm resolution, which is the reason I lost the championship in 1959, and it’s also the reason why I’m here talking to you today and having a nice glass of wine.

Brooks (in the #20 Aston Martin) said his crash at Silverstone and accident at Le Mans changed his approach to racing

Photo by: Motorsport Images

MH: I take your point. And nice to have you here… cheers! Before we get on to the championship in 1959, I want to stay with 1957. After the Le Mans accident, you were covered with abrasions; you referred to having a hole in your right side. I take it that was no exaggeration?

TB: No. You could get tennis ball in the hole. I don’t know what caused it; it must have been part of the cockpit; it may have been pressed against the door handle or something. But that contributed towards the firm resolution I refer to. If you can’t take hints like that, you are thick.

MH: So, the British GP at Aintree was coming up and you had a commitment to Vanwall. But you weren’t in the best of shape, were you?

TB: It was less than a month between the two events. I’d been in bed until the Tuesday before the British Grand Prix. The first time I drove a car after Le Mans was my father’s Ford Zephyr to go to Aintree for the first day of practice, which would have been the Thursday because the race was on Saturday in those days. I’d lost a stone; with my physique, that’s quite a lot to lose. I wasn’t in a fit state to race, but the obvious thinking was that we’d have a better chance of winning the race if we could start three cars rather than just two, Stirling and Stuart Lewis-Evans being the other drivers.

I equalled the lap record in practice, which I was pleased about. Stirling, in fact, was slower in my car when he tried it. But, in his new car, he was something like two tenths of a second quicker. I was on the front row, but putting in a fast lap is one thing; 90 laps at competitive speed in my state of health wouldn’t have been on. So we agreed that in the event of Stirling or Stuart having a problem with their cars, they would take over my car – which was how it worked.

MH: Stirling had a misfire, came in, took over your car and climbed back through the field to win; a joint win for you both, which, of course, was allowed in those days.

TB: I was very sorry that I was in that sort of state, but it was my fault, really. It resulted in a great success for Vanwall and for British motor racing, and that’s what mattered. It was a wonderful feeling but, obviously, I regret I wasn’t able to do it alone. But the main thing was that Vanwall won the first [of an eventual nine] world championship events.

Brooks alongside Tony Vandervell and Stirling Moss, having handed over his Vanwall to Moss on the way to winning the 1957 British GP

Photo by: Motorsport Images

MH: Although you might not have said anything, was part of that weekend at Aintree quietly proving to yourself that you were still OK after the Le Mans accident?

TB: Absolutely. It was very important, psychologically. Neither of the accidents undermined my confidence because there was a perfectly good reason for them; a sticking throttle at Silverstone and sheer stupidity at Le Mans. It wasn’t a driver error as such, you see, and that makes all the difference.

MH: You really proved it by winning at Spa and the Nurburgring; two wonderful circuits.

TB: Yes, well, I thought the three great circuits were Spa, Nurburgring and Monza, and it was lovely to win them all in one season: 1958 was a very, very satisfying year, it really was.

MH: Tell us about driving for Ferrari in 1959. When you got the call, how did you feel about it?

TB: They say every driver has a wish to drive part of their career with Ferrari and I was fortunate that it was thrust upon me; I didn’t have to ask him [Enzo Ferrari]. In January 1959, Tony Vandervell announced his team’s retirement from grand prix motor racing and Romolo Tavoni, the team manager at Ferrari, rang me up within a few days and asked if I would be interested in driving for Ferrari. So what do you say?

MH: How did you find Enzo Ferrari? Was there a translator? Did you speak Italian by that stage?

TB: Yes I did. I never had any problem with Enzo Ferrari. We must have had a chat for about 45 minutes, without the need to have an accountant or a lawyer on either side. We agreed the terms for me to drive for Ferrari for ’59. I really didn’t want to do Le Mans and, to my amazement, he agreed – because obviously Le Mans was very important when it came to selling his road cars.

MH: How was the Formula 1 car in 1959?

TB: We were in the middle of a transformation from front engine to rear engine. But the point is, Ferrari could and should have won the world championship that year. But there was a strike and they didn’t go to the British Grand Prix at Aintree. Jean Behra and I had been first and second in the Aintree 200 [a non-championship race] a few weeks beforehand, so the chances were high. But we never appeared at the British Grand Prix, so no points there for Ferrari.

Then, the Belgian Grand Prix was cancelled. I’d won every time I’d been to Spa, which was three times, and if ever there was a Ferrari circuit, this was it. So, the odds were that I should have got some points there. Then there was the Italian Grand Prix where I was on the front row, next to Stirling, who was on pole with the Cooper-Climax. Probably the words I most regret ever uttering in this life was after practice when I said: “Oh, I’m smelling Ferodo a little bit; I’m pretty sure it’s the brakes.” They decided it might have been the clutch and changed it overnight – which was totally unnecessary. Either there was a faulty clutch or they didn’t  put it in properly, because I did 100 metres at the start of the Italian GP and that was it. No points.

Brooks was convinced Ferrari had the car to win the 1959 F1 world championship

Photo by: Motorsport Images

MH: And now we come to the final round, the US Grand Prix at Sebring. This is significant in the light of the pact that you’d made with yourself.

TB: That’s correct. Dear old Wolfgang von Trips rams me up the backside on the first lap. Remembering my decision that you must check the car, I had half a lap agonising about it. I’m proud I had the courage, and that’s what it needed, because I knew I was blowing the championship: I still had a chance of winning the title at that point.

By going in, I was honouring the solemn promise to myself, but I was also saying cheerio to the championship. The car was OK. The irony was Stirling retired and Brabham ran out of petrol; Jack was always trying to cut it too fine! I would have won the race and the championship. Instead, I finished third and Jack took the title. That’s why I say Ferrari could have won the championship that year.

MH: I take it you have absolutely no regrets whatsoever about that decision at Sebring.

TB: No, and I’d do the same again. I would have been dishonourable to myself if I’d broken it. And as I say, that’s one of the reasons why I’m sitting here having lunch with you.

MH: Because your belief is that God has given us a life and it shouldn’t be abused in any way?

TB: That’s right; absolutely. It’s sacred.

MH: There’s a lot of talk today about team-mates, particularly with Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg being competitive drivers in a very competitive car. Did that arise in those days because you had, at Ferrari for example, quite a mixed band of team-mates? Did you just do your own thing, and that was the start and end of it?

TB: In my conversation with Ferrari, he made it perfectly clear there would be no number one driver until it became obvious who was most likely to win the championship. Then you would become the number one driver, which fell on my shoulders. And he said number one doesn’t mean ‘I’ll have that car, I’ll have that engine, I’ll have that chassis and put them all together.’ It means the team objectives and programme would try to ensure the driver in question went ahead and won the title. When I established myself as the most promising winner, then I became number one, but only then. Which was very sensible.

MH: And it’s all recorded in detail in your book – which I believe you wrote entirely yourself.

TB: Every word. It’s a true autobiography!

MH: Well, on the basis of your remarkable story, I have to say it’s a shame you’re not world champion because you deserve to be. But nice, as you say, to have you here to tell us about it.

TB: You’re very generous. Thank you. 

More: Tony Brooks - obituary

Brooks passed away at the age of 90 earlier this year

Photo by: Drew Gibson