Earlier this year the motor racing world lost Tony Brooks, the last surviving Grand Prix winner from the 1950’s, and perhaps the most underrated Grand Prix driver of all. Brooks was part of a new wave of talented British Grand Prix stars that emerged in the early to mid-1950’s. This new wave set the scene for the British Invasion of the sport in the 1960’s.
There was Stirling Moss, who became one of the greatest drivers of all. Very fast, confident, a jet setter and perhaps the first truly professional Formula One driver. Mike Hawthorn was debonair, charismatic, liked a drink and always raced wearing a bow tie. If he had been born ten years earlier he would have been flying Spitfires.
Peter Collins was Enzo Ferrari’s golden boy, he married the beautiful American actress and was best friends with Hawthorn. They referred to themselves as Mon Ami Mates. In the early 2000’s my Grandmother, having never expressed any interest in motorsport, randomly told me she used to have such a crush on Peter Collins. He was the darling of the media.
Then there was Brooks. He didn’t look like a racing driver. He was wiry, quiet, calm, calculating and fastidiously healthy. His modus operandi was to drive at 95%, and more importantly not drive a mechanically sub-standard car. If there was a chance the car was damaged during the race, others may have risked it and carried on (e.g. Portago at the 1957 Mille Miglia) but Brooks would park it.
Even the thought of a possible mechanical defect could play on the mind of a driver and result in a lapse in concentration. Any lapse could result in a big shunt. This logic was ingrained into Brooks following crashes at the British Grand Prix in 1956 and at Le Mans in 1957. Both shunts were both caused by mechanical defects.
This isn’t to say Brooks was not a quick driver. In the late 1950’s he was arguably the best of the rest after Moss. The great journalist Denis Jenkinson once said that Brooks was “maybe not quite the equal of Moss, but much better than Hawthorn and Collins. A great driver.”
The stats tell the story. Out of 39 Grand Prix starts, he won six of them and stood on the podium a total of ten times. This is testament to both his mechanical sympathy and his speed.
Brooks started his racing career like many drivers of the time, competing in club events up and down the UK. He had his big international breakthrough in 1955 by winning the Syracuse Grand Prix at the wheel of a Connaught. His preparation was hardly ideal, having only driven the car a few times beforehand, learning the circuit via a Vespa motor scooter and also studying for his dentistry exams in the evening before the race.
By 1958, Brooks was driving for the all-British Vanwall team, partnering Stirling Moss and Stuart Lewis-Evans. The car was designed by Colin Chapman and Frank Costin, and funded by industrialist Tony Vandervell. It was a quick car in the corners, but tricky to drive on the limit, it didn’t like to be thrown around. It didn’t have the predictability of the Maserati 250F or Ferrari 246 Dino.
Brooks always seemed to go well on road courses, long circuits which weaved through the trees with little or no margin for error. Indeed earlier in the 1958 season Brooks had won the Belgian Grand Prix on the fastest, most dangerous circuit of them all, Spa Francorchamps. This was quite a feat given Moss reckoned the Vanwall was 15mph down on the Ferraris.
Brooks had very clear views on the challenges of such circuits. “Nobody will persuade me there isn’t more of a challenge to the driver if he knows he might hurt himself if he goes off. Brick walls and trees and ditches instil a discipline, believe me! I can remember drivers who were quick on ‘aerodrome circuits’, but no threat at all on true road circuits.”
By the time the 1958 season reached the German Grand Prix, at the fearsome Nurburgring, Brooks was seemingly out of contention for the championship. The table was being headed by Hawthorn from Moss and Collins. Brooks needed a good result to pull him back into title hunt. Practice went well and Brooks ended up four seconds quicker than team mate Moss. Vanwall team manager, David Yorke, then parked Brooks and as a result he didn’t do any laps on full fuel tanks. This would cause problems early in the race.
The grid would consist of the Fab Four on the front row together, Hawthorn from Brooks, Moss and Collins. The race started at a terrific pace, with Moss initially leading from Brooks and Harry Schell in the BRM. Pole sitter Hawthorn had slipped the clutch too much on his Ferrari and almost burnt it out, dropping him back. He’d have to take care of his gear changes for the rest of the race.
Hawthorn and Collins quickly went by Schell and Brooks, whilst Moss adopted his usual strategy of sprinting off early on. He pulled out a 17 second lead by lap three and had already broken Fangio’s 1957 lap record by eight seconds. Stirling’s car soon gave up though, which left Hawthorn and Collins circulating together almost 30 seconds ahead of third placed Brooks.
This was not uncommon for Brooks, biding his time before making his attack. Brooks recalled in Autosport “I had quite the opposite approach (to Moss), which was to sit back for a while, see what happened to the opposition and then make a move.”
The two Ferrari drivers then started signalling to each other who should come first and who should come second. Collins had signalled that Hawthorn should win in order to increase his lead in the drivers championship. In his book ‘Champion Year’, Hawthorn said “despite the fact that Pete’s win at Silverstone had brought him within striking distance of Stirling (in the championship), he was still determined he wanted me to win”.
They continued to circulate with Collins ahead of Hawthorn and also signalled that they’d expect Brooks to appear behind them in the other Vanwall at any moment. They had suffered the year before when Fangio had reeled them in and taken the win after suffering a slow pit stop, they didn’t want that to happen again.
Meanwhile David Yorke was signalling Brooks to hurry up, which is exactly what he did now his fuel load got lighter and the car started handling to his liking. His lap times dropped from 9 minutes 25.4 seconds to 9 minutes 14.2 seconds. By lap eight he was on Hawthorn’s tail, he then dived up the inside at the North Turn on lap nine to take second place. Brooks was then the meat inside a Ferrari sandwich until they reached the long back straight and Hawthorn powered back past Brooks.
He was back down to third but then pulled the same move on Hawthorn into the North Turn. The same thing happened again the following lap, but this time Brooks nipped past Hawthorn then grabbed the lead from Collins into the South Turn. Brooks had managed a lap time of 9 minutes 10.6 seconds, all three drivers were on the limit. It was an excellent dice and cheers from the crowd erupted every time they passed by.
As Brooks explained in Chris Nixon’s excellent book ‘Mon Ami Mate’, he was worried about the Ferraris getting back past him on the long back straight, “I knew I had to get sufficiently far ahead of Peter and Mike on that eleventh lap to prevent them catching me on the straight, where the Ferraris were considerably faster than the Vanwall… all three of us were driving very hard indeed.”
Too hard it seemed. As they approached the Pflanzgarten, Collins seemed to miss a gear and Hawthorn pulled up alongside. Instead of overtaking he pulled back in behind Collins as they raced into the Pflanzgarten, which was a little jump into a right hander. Collins had lost precious time on Brooks and needed to be closer to be able to slipstream him on the back straight.
Collins turned in just a little bit too late, “maybe two yards out of line” according to Hawthorn. A trackside photographer captured Collins with a touch of opposite lock as he entered the corner. The car slid progressively wider throughout the corner until it ran off the road and overturned in a cloud of dust. Hawthorn, who had witnessed it all from a few car lengths behind said “there was a blur of blue as Pete was thrown out and I put the brakes on and almost stopped as I looked round. I saw the car bounce upside down in a great cloud of dust, before it came to rest.”
Brooks arrived at the back straight, tucked down and looked in his mirrors expecting the Ferraris to be slipstreaming him, but Collins was nowhere to be seen and Hawthorn was a long way back. “I thought that Peter’s Ferrari must have blown up and my reaction was one of great disappointment, as I was really into the swing of things and greatly enjoying our battle.”
Brooks went on to win the race and was congratulated by team mate Moss. Initial reports on the condition of Collins were varied with some people saying he was bruised but okay, others saying it was more serious. Hawthorn had actually been driven back to the pits by a spectator after the race and asked the driver to stop at the crash site. He found the badly dented helmet of Collins lying on the floor, which showed he’d hit something very hard with his head. He’d actually been thrown into a small tree. He died in the helicopter on the way to hospital.
The death of Collins obviously cast a huge shadow over the race. To this day if you mention the 1958 German Grand Prix to any motorsport aficionado the first thing they will likely think of is Collins. The drive of Brooks is somewhat forgotten as a result, which is a shame as it is arguably up there with Fangio’s famous win from the year before.
Brooks ended the season third in the drivers championship, then moved to Ferrari and took second in 1959. Had he found a competitive seat in 1960 he could well have won the title. He retired after the 1961 season to focus on his car dealership business, not dentistry!
He’d gotten out of the most dangerous era of the sport intact, which was an achievement in itself. The likes of Brooks, Moss, Hawthorn, Collins and Vanwall paved the way for the British dominance of motorsport in the 1960’s. Brooks could still be seen in the 2000’s driving old cars at Goodwood in long beautiful drifts. That deft of touch hadn’t left him, but as ever he drove within himself.
Moss still holds the mantle of greatest driver never to have won the championship, but for me Brooks is up there with Jacky Ickx as the best of the rest. He’s certainly one of the most underrated drivers in Formula One history. Years ago Autosport’s Nigel Roebuck asked Moss if he were running an F1 team and could have any two drivers, who would he choose. His reply was “Jim Clark and Tony Brooks”. High praise indeed.
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