Q&A
AMC: You started racing quite late; were you
reluctant to follow in your dad’s footsteps?
GB: It was one of those things. Second-
generation drivers were not a thing back then,
and Dad had no interest in me going racing.
I left school in 1970 and we moved back to
Australia, so he’d sold all his interests with
Brabham. I’d been away at boarding school so
I didn’t really get involved in those years, but
when I came back here he was sponsoring a
Formula Ford. It took me several years to talk
him into letting me have a go in that.
AMC: So you were keen?
GB: Yeah, I was. I’d grown up with racing
my whole life, and I consider myself fairly
competitive by nature so I always wanted to give
it a go. I got my CAMS licence (in his mum’s
Cortina wagon!) and Dad realised that he might
as well give me a test. The rst time I ever drove
was at Oran Park and basically he just leaned
in and said, ‘There’s the brake, there’s throttle,
there’s the steering wheel, if you crash it don’t
come back!’ And that’s the only thing he ever
said to me, ever!
AMC: Seriously? That’s the only tuition he gave
you?
GB: Yep. That’s all I got. And David got basically
the same. But you’ve got to realise he came
from a different era. As an example, I took him
to a guy who wanted to do a book on what
makes a champion, and this guy had a huge
notepad and his pencil ready, and his rst
question to Dad was, ‘Now tell me, Jack, what
makes someone like you different to anyone
else, why are you a champion?’ Dad just said,
‘You’re either fast or you’re not.’ And it didn’t
matter which way he tried to angle it, he got the
same answer. Back in his day, you just had the
stopwatch and nothing else. You could either do
it or you couldn’t.
AMC: Do you see the Brabham name as
something that held you back or pushed you
forward?
GB: I don’t think it’s either, to be honest. I never
viewed it as a positive or a negative.
AMC: You were one of the rst sons of fathers
sort of thing, whereas now...
GB: Yeah, there are kinds of dozens. People’s
favourite question is, ‘Was there any pressure?’
But the pressure you put on yourself makes the
pressure anyone else puts on you insigni cant.
It was never an issue for me.
AMC: How did you deal with the step up in
performance when you drove Can-Am?
GB: For me it was easier going bigger and
faster than the other way. I always felt I was
more suited to high downforce and really high
horsepower cars.
AMC: How did you feel nishing fth on debut
in the Indy 500?
GB: I was ecstatic because the race was
awesome. I’d never gone there before – I never
went when my Dad raced there – and it was
like nothing I’d ever experienced before. It
was unbelievable, especially back then when
there were 40 or 45 cars trying to make it into
the race. There were people crashing left,
right and centre, people getting hurt; it was an
experience.
AMC: Were you ever scared?
GB: No, I wasn’t scared. You’ve got con dence
in your abilities. So as long as nothing breaks
and you don’t get caught up in someone else’s
accident, you feel con dent in yourself, but
those cars are mentally a huge challenge. I
really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, a lot of years I
wasn’t quite with the right team at the right timej
the race itself.
AMC: You won two IROC races on an oval and
did the rst Brickyard 400. Why didn’t you ever
do another NASCAR race?
GB: Well, the team folded after that. I did talk
to another team and they were interested in
running me the following year, but their sponsor
fell over. I would have liked to have done it,
yeah, but you’ve got to be realistic. I was an
outsider and it’s a very specialised eld.
AMC: How do you feel about your Formula One
aspirations not coming to anything?
GB: I was disappointed at the time, but looking
back on my career, I wouldn’t swap it with too
many people. Going to America ended up being
a really good decision for me. It worried me at
the time because I felt like I was competitive
with other people in F3 who ended up in
Formula One, so I felt like I could do it if given
the chance, but I got over it.
AMC: It’s a little-known fact that you tested a
Brabham BT49 in 1981.
GB: Yeah, it was when Bernie Ecclestone
owned the team. I went to Paul Ricard and it
didn’t go very well because I didn’t t in the car.
We were trying to make changes so I could
kind of drive it. Paul Ricard had a really long
fast right-hand corner, and these cars had skirts
on them so the downforce was enormous. I
nally got to where I thought I could drive it
okay and then they put some new tyres on and
rst lap out I got in this corner and my neck
just totally failed with the g forces and I just
couldn’t drive it. So it was just a waste of time. I
have a long neck anyway. In an Indycar on the
ovals you can do things to help it, but on a road
course you can’t do that, and it had way more
downforce than what I’d experienced before.
Just the nature of the circuit, my neck failed and
that was it. I was disappointed I couldn’t show
what I felt I could do.