Tony Brooks was a renowned British driver in the 1950s who came close to winning the Formula One championship in 1959. In only 38 starts, he won six Grands Prix and finished on the podium ten times. Only Juan Manuel Fangio, Alberto Ascari, and Stirling Moss were more successful during his time.
In 1959, he joined Ferrari and won races in France and Germany, followed by a second-place finish in Monaco. Despite two retirements, he was still in contention for the championship in the last round at Sebring. However, he was hit by his teammate Wolfgang von Trips on the first lap.
Brooks had been in two major incidents previously in his career, at Silverstone and Le Mans, which had impacted the way he approached racing and informed his conduct at Sebring. “My natural instinct was to keep going,” he explained. “Believe me, that would have been the easiest thing to do, but I forced myself to come in and have the car inspected.”
He dropped a lap and finished third, but it wasn’t enough to stop Jack Brabham, who had run out of gasoline and pulled his car across the line for fourth, from winning the race.
Brooks was a hugely popular and admired figure. He was a lovely, unassuming gentleman who was an unsung hero in a time when racing was extremely perilous. He began club racing in 1952 before joining Aston Martin’s sports car team in 1954.
He was born on February 25, 1932, in Dukinfield, Cheshire. He was studying for his finals in dentistry — his family’s profession – in 1955 when he was called in as a last-minute substitute for the Connaught team for the Syracuse Grand Prix, which he won.
It was an incredible achievement, the first GP victory for a British driver in a British car in 31 years, and it earned him the nickname “the racing dentist.”
Tony Brooks, a former Formula One race winner and world championship candidate, died at the age of 90. Giulia, his daughter, announced his death on Tuesday.
