Yahoo Autos What I'd Do Differently: David Brabham
Car and Driver: A three-time F1 champion, your father was arguably Australia's most successful racing driver. Your brothers raced but you weren't meant to, were you?
David Brabham: The plan was for me to be a farmer. When I was a kid, my sport was always football. When I was 13, I went to an agricultural boarding school. I was being groomed to take over the family farm—we had 4500 acres—because I'd shown no interest in motorsport.
So what changed?
To be fair, I'd always loved driving fast on the farm, going sideways in anything. I set to go to college in Wagga Wagga to learn about wool, if you can believe that. I took a couple months off to visit my brother Geoff, who was doing IndyCar; I came back and said to my dad, "I want to go racing, too."
Tell me about the argument you had with your father before the Formula 2 race at the 1987 Australian Drivers' Championship.
Earlier that year, I'd had to tell my parents that my girlfriend was pregnant, which went down like a lead balloon. My dad reckoned I'd ended my career before it started. My car had broken in qualifying so I was at the back [in 38th place]. My dad came to see me on the grid and he was wearing a Formula 1 pass. I said that I'd have one soon enough when I was in F1, which triggered a blazing row that ended with me telling him to F off. By the time the race started, I was in a proper rage, determined to prove him wrong, and there was no way I wasn't going to win it. I passed everyone, and I found out later that halfway through, Dad got Jackie Stewart and Ken Tyrrell up on the pit wall to watch: "That's my boy!"
You had a long and successful career in sports cars as well as two tries at F1. You were at Imola on the weekend when both your teammate, Roland Ratzenberger, and Ayrton Senna died. Was that the low point?
It was horrible. I didn't know how to deal with Roland dying at the time. I'd never lost a teammate. He was killed in qualifying, and the team asked me what I wanted to do; it was my call whether to race or not. I decided to do the warmup, and I was quick for us. Then it seemed right to do the race. I didn't know Senna had crashed. There was just dust by the time I got there, and I was trying to drive my own race.
It took you several attempts to manage an overall victory at Le Mans, finally winning it in 2009 with Peugeot. Did that feel like the pinnacle?
As a single race, yes. I drove with Bentley [in 2003], and when I crossed the line in second place, I felt absolutely flat; I thought I'd never get a chance like that again. The Peugeot 908 was an absolute monster. That diesel V-12 has huge grunt. We were definitely [Peugeot's] number-three car, and I knew [our team's] management wanted the French-driven car to take it, understandably. But although they were faster, they spent longer in the pits.
At the same time, you were in a court battle to regain control of the Brabham name. Why?
It came from thinking of what I was going to do next when I was too old and slow to race. The family still held certain rights, but a German guy had trademarked Brabham and Brabham Racing in Europe and was trying to make this pimped-up BMW M3 and call it the BT92. It took years to get the name back, and although I was still earning well, pretty much everything coming in was going straight back out to the lawyers.
You won in the end, but how did that lead to Brabham Automotive and your own BT62 supercar project?
It was all about doing something to create a race team. Just going racing is a difficult gig, but if you've got a car, you can build around it. When I met some guys in Australia looking to launch a supercar, everything just aligned. It was perfect for the Brabham brand. The goal is to go to Le Mans.
With 700 horses and weighing about 2400 pounds, the BT62 will be close to the performance of some of your race cars.
I'd like it to be like one of the GT1s, a car that makes you push yourself. I hated touring cars. The racing was great, but every time you tried to go quicker and commit harder, you'd end up slower.
What would you do differently?
That's an impossible question. It all leads to where you are. Looking back like that will drive you mad.
It must sting to have beaten a load of guys who went on to do really big things, huh?
Schumacher, Häkkinen, Zanardi—they were winning championships while I was ducking and diving for drives. But you play the cards you're given, and I loved pretty much every minute of racing. Okay, one regret: not pursuing IndyCar. I had a few chances but they never panned out. I'd have loved to do that.
From the July 2019 issue
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