Farmer's Weekly (South Africa)
Kyalami ’70
50 YEARS AGO
It is said that in boxing, one cannot make a successful comeback. While this might be true for boxers, it certainly does not seem to be true for motor racers.
Jack Brabham, 43 years young, is back in the race for the world drivers’ championship this year. Brabham has never really been out of motor racing except when he has been slightly ‘bent’ after a prang, but it was in 1966 that he last won the world championship.
This year, the Old Fox, ‘Black Jack’ Brabham, is back with a vengeance. Still the shrewdest racing driver of them all, he showed a clean pair of exhaust pipes to the strongest field ever to contest the South African Grand Prix, which was held at Kyalami on 7 March.
Nine points to the Australianborn Brabham in the chase for the coveted title of ‘World Champion Driver’ is not going to make it easy for the rest of the pack to wrest the crown from this master of the race circuits this year. With a more competitive car than he had last year, when he finished 10th in the championship, it is going to take a lot of skill, courage or guts if you know racing, to shake the Old Fox off this year. Always the tactician, Brabham is rarely outwitted, and few drivers show the consistent brilliance of the man who graduated from the dirt tracks Down Under.
South Africa’s Dave Charlton, driving a Lotus 49 C, made this year’s race for those of us who lament the fact that the drivers who are not works-backed have little chance of winning with the massive resources pitted against them by the works teams. Charlton did just this. From the back of the field, driving a car that is the same as those driven by Graham Hill, Charlton worked his way through the pack to fifth place, ahead of the other three Lotus 49 Cs.
Luck was not with him; his left rear tyre, which had taken terrible punishment, brought him into the pits with four laps to go, and Charlton’s challenge ended with him sitting in the car in the pits while his helpers desperately tried to replace the shot tyre. It was not to be, but we can be proud of our driver, who matched his skill against the best in the world, and was not found wanting.
The first South African driver home was the sixth-time South African champion, John Love, who will be the first to admit that he wouldn’t have minded had he been the second, if Charlton had beaten him.