The Brabham Racing Organisation entered the " works " cars until 1968

Brabham also drove for the works Matra team during the 1970 World Sportscar Championship season and won the final race of the season and his final top level race at the Paris 1000 km in October that year.

The next year,, Brabham and the Cooper works team became the first to win the Formula One World Championship in a rear-engined car.

In the early years of the 1600cc formula, Brabham and Lotus were the most numerous constructors, although Ferrari intermittently entered a works team, as did BMW ( with Lola and Dornier-built chassis ).

The BRP BRM P25 which Stirling Moss drove to second place in the 1959 British Grand Prix, BRP's first podium finish. The race was won by Australian Jack Brabham taking his second Grand Prix victory in a works Cooper T51.

Championship points leader Australian Jack Brabham finished third in works entered Cooper T51, expanding his points lead, but not sufficiently to prevent a championship showdown with Moss and Ferrari driver Tony Brooks at the United States Grand Prix.

The field featured works Coopers for Brabham and 22-year-old Bruce McLaren of New Zealand ; blue Rob Walker-entered Coopers for Moss and Frenchman Maurice Trintignant ; four Ferraris — three in Italian red for Englishmen Brooks and Cliff Allison, and German Wolfgang von Trips ; one in American white and blue for Phil Hill ; front-engined Lotuses for Innes Ireland and Alan Stacey ; and, incomprehensibly for the European road-racing elite, the number 1 Kurtis-Offy Midget of USAC National Champion Rodger Ward, the only American-built and American-driven entry.

Piers Courage finished second, driving a Frank Williams-prepared Brabham and out-racing Sir Jack himself and Jacky Ickx in the works Brabhams.

Rindt now led a group of three Brabhams, with Courage ahead of the two works entries of Ickx and Brabham, by 37 seconds.

Hunt, however, was struggling with fading brakes, and Pace, in third with the second works Brabham, was ready to pounce.

RAM was going to run Rolf Stommelen in one of its ex-works Brabham BT44s, but in the middle of the practice session the local police impounded the cars ( because of a legal action by former driver Loris Kessel ), and as a result Stommelen transferred to the works Brabham team to drive a spare Alfa-Romeo-powered BT45.

He drove a privately-entered Brabham for Goldie Hexagon Racing at the French Grand Prix but failed to qualify, before moving to the works team alongside namesake Carlos Reutemann for the next race.

In Courage's hands, Williams's dark-blue liveried Brabham BT26 was more than a match for many of the works teams.

In 1970, he made his Formula One debut with Brabham with sponsorship obtained from the German magazine " Auto Motor und Sport " and raced both sportscars ( Toj and Porsche works teams ) and Formula 1 throughout the 1970s.

For 1969, the works Brabham team and most of the private Brabham entries also used the ubiquitous Cosworth powerplant.

His Grand Prix career was then virtually over, though he had three more one-off drives, all at the Italian Grand Prix – a works Brabham in 1965, a Reg Parnell-entered Ferrari in 1966, and a works Lotus in 1967, when he would have scored a point but for a blown engine.

The first was in a works Brabham BT45B, in Martini Racing colours, at the 1977 Italian Grand Prix.

In the 1960s, Brabham was the world's largest manufacturer of open wheel racing cars for sale to customer teams, and had built more than 500 cars by 1970.

The new company would compete with Cooper in the market for customer racing cars ; as Brabham was still employed by Cooper, Tauranac produced the first MRD car, for the entry level Formula Junior class, in secrecy.

The Brabham Racing Organisation ( BRO ) started the year fielding customer Lotus chassis, in which Brabham took two points finishes, before the turquoise-liveried Brabham BT3 car made its debut at the 1962 German Grand Prix.

In 1962 he established his own Brabham marque with fellow Australian Ron Tauranac, which became the largest manufacturer of customer racing cars in the world in the 1960s.

Brabham and Tauranac set up a company called Motor Racing Developments Ltd. ( MRD ), which initially produced customer racing cars, while Brabham himself continued to race for Cooper.

While it was the team's second podium result, it was the first and only podium they would achieve in one of their own cars, having previously achieved a second at the 1969 Monaco Grand Prix with a customer Brabham.

In the UK, the arrival of the Cosworth DFV engine meant that many teams could now afford to build their own chassis around a good engine / transmission package, so Cooper, Lotus and Brabham stopped the production of customer Formula 1 cars.

During this period, teams using Brabham cars won championships in Formula Two and Formula Three.

Brabham cars also competed in the Indianapolis 500 and in Formula 5000 racing.

The Brabham team was founded by Jack Brabham and Ron Tauranac, who met in 1951 while both were successfully building and racing cars in their native Australia.

In 1959 and 1960, Brabham won the Formula One world drivers ' championship in Cooper's revolutionary mid-engined cars.

Brabham was confident he could do better than Cooper, and in late 1959 he asked Tauranac to come to the UK and work with him, initially producing upgrade kits for Sunbeam Rapier and Triumph Herald road cars at his car dealership, Jack Brabham Motors, but with the long-term aim of designing racing cars.

" The cars were subsequently known as Brabhams, with type numbers starting with BT for " Brabham Tauranac ".

Brabham had a poor season, scoring only four points, and — having run his own private Coopers in non-championship events during 1961 — left the company in 1962 to drive for his own team: the Brabham Racing Organisation, using cars built by Motor Racing Developments.

Brabham was a Royal Australian Air Force flight mechanic and ran a small engineering workshop before he started racing midget cars in 1948.

In 1966 Brabham became the first-and still the only-man to win the Formula One world championship driving one of his own cars.

Brabham was involved with cars and mechanics from an early age.

Visits to the Cooper factory for parts led to a friendship with Charlie and John Cooper, who told the story that after many requests for a drive with the factory team, Brabham was given the keys to the transporter taking the cars to a race.

Brabham briefly and unsuccessfully campaigned his own second hand Formula One Maserati 250F during 1956, but his season was saved by drives for Cooper in sports cars and Formula Two, the junior category to Formula One.

Brabham was among those up until 1 am the morning before the race working on the Cooper team cars.

He considered buying Cooper in partnership with Roy Salvadori and then in late 1959 he asked his friend Ron Tauranac to come to the UK and work with him, initially producing upgrade kits for Sunbeam Rapier and Triumph Herald road cars at his car dealership, Jack Brabham Motors, but with the long-term aim of designing racing cars.

Jack Brabham took the team's first win at the non-championship Solitude Grand Prix in 1963.

The Brabham team took the constructors ' world championship in both years.

Brabham himself took a couple of pole positions and two top three finishes, but did not finish half the races.

In 1948, Schonberg's wife persuaded him to stop racing and on his suggestion Brabham took over.

Brabham's driving on public roads was described as " safe as houses ", unlike many of his contemporaries — on the way back from the 1957 Pescara Grand Prix, passenger Tony Brooks took over driving after Brabham refused to overtake a long line of lorries.

Gurney took the lead driver role, and the team's first world championship win, while Brabham gave up his car to several other drivers towards the end of the season.

Brabham took a different approach to the problem of obtaining a suitable engine: he persuaded Australian engineering company Repco to develop a new 3-litre eight-cylinder engine for him.

At the French Grand Prix at Reims-Gueux, Jack Brabham took his first Formula One world championship win since 1960 and became the first man to win such a race in a car of his own construction.

McLaren took the lead on the last lap of the race when his team-mate, Jack Brabham, ran out of fuel.

By virtue of Ferrari's Tony Brooks finishing 3rd, Brabham and Cooper took the drivers ' and constructor's championships.

Jack Brabham raised some eyebrows when he took sixth place at the 1957 Monaco Grand Prix in a rear-engined Formula 1 Cooper.

Brabham took one of the Championship-winning Cooper T53 " Lowline " to Indianapolis Motor Speedway for a test in 1960, then entered the famous 500-mile race in a larger, longer and offset car based on the 1960 F1 design.

In a nine-year period, the team took 16 Grand Prix wins, as Brabham and the team won back-to-back World Championships in 1959 and 1960.

While Brabham himself scored the maiden victory for his car at the 1963 Solitude race, it was Gurney again who took the team's first win in a championship race, in 1964, again at Rouen.

Brabham took the lead from Moss while his teammate McLaren followed in second for most of the race.

As Brabham took the early lead into Turn One, ahead of Gurney and Moss, the Riverside radio and PA announcer could only call their names and utter, " Wow.

Gurney got by Brabham and Ginther and briefly took third place, but on lap 11, Ginther retook the spot behind his teammate when Gurney slid half off the track, inches from the Armco, on a patch of oil in the Loop.

Jack Brabham took second place after a strong fight with Trevor Taylor, who also suffered mechanical problems.

New World Champion Clark took the final podium spot when he overtook Brabham, whose engine had been misfiring for much of the race.

On the second lap, Clark took the lead from Hill, as the two pulled away from Bandini, Spence, Gurney and Brabham.

Brabham took a nine second victory over British driver Mike Parkes driving a Ferrari 312.