Brabham impresses in US
YOUNG Gold Coaster Matthew Brabham is following in the footsteps of his dad after a signature weekend at the Road America circuit in Elkhart Lake.
The 18-year-old surged into the lead of the Cooper Tires USF2000 Championship following a pair of wins and a third.
Brabham is the son of the eldest of Sir Jack Brabham’s three sons, Geoff, and after tasting some success with Formula Ford racing in Australia he is quickly making a name for himself in the US.
His dad Geoff, 60, won the Australian Formula 2 Championship in 1975 before moving to England and later the US, where his career really took off in the ’ 80s and ’90s.
Geoff was a regular IndyCar driver and had a best-place finish of fourth in the Indy 500 but his greatest triumph was winning the IMSA GTP Championship on four consecutive occasions starting in 1988.
Matthew is destined for a similar path to his dad in the supremely competitive junior open-wheel category, where he races for Cape Motorsports with Wayne Taylor Racing.
The Southport School product has been given his best chance of reaching the lofty heights of his dad and his granddad Sir Jack, who famously won three F1 world championships.
‘‘I am very happy with how things have gone this weekend,’’ said the fast-maturing Brabham.
‘‘I’ve been struggling a little bit to get to that next step on the podium, but the car was really, really good through the race.’’
Brabham had to overcome gear shift problems in qualifying before he made his move on a restart in the opening race to slip past Spencer Pigot to score his second win of the season.
For the next race, Brabham secured pole position from where he scampered clear and was never bothered in the 12-lap event.
In the third and final race at Elkhart Lake, Brabham’s podium place was enough for him to establish a 14-point lead in the series.
‘‘I don’t think we had the right set-up today and I really had a bad understeer that got worse as the race went on,’’ he commented.
Brabham is now favourite to win the title, with the final two rounds at Baltimore (August 31-September 2) and Virginia (September 14-16) each staging two races.
Fellow Australian David Besnard in 1998 won the Championship, which has become a decent nursery for future open-wheel stars.
The late Dan Wheldon won the series the year after Besnard and went on to become an IndyCar series champion and a double Indy 500 winner.
Current IndyCar driver JR Hildebrand won the US Formula Ford 2000 Championship in 2006.
So Matthew is in some pretty good company if he can get his name on the championship trophy.