Whiskers hanging down to his waist, clutching a stick for support, a bent figure hobbled onto the starting grid at Holland's Zandvoort race track last week, made his way slowly to a sleek green-and-gold car sitting in the front row. Then, with a smirk at the astonished crowd, Jack Brabham dropped the cane, pulled off the whiskers, revved up the engine of his Brabham-Repco racer, and roared off to win the Dutch Grand Prix.
The little charade was Brabham's way of thumbing his nose at Dutch and British sportswriters who have taken to calling him the grand old man of auto racing. At 40, Australian Brabham is the oldest driver on the Grand Prix circuit. When he first arrived in 1955, determined to make a name for himself amid the sophisticates of European racing, Brabham had more lead in his foot than skill in his hands. Watching him hurtle recklessly around the track, his fellow drivers would not have given a plugged sixpence for his chances of success—or survival. "The marvelous thing about watching Jack come out of a turn," sighed one at the time, "is that you never know which end of the car will show up first."
It took four years, but Brabham began to show up front end first—at the finish line. He beat Stirling Moss for the world championship in 1959, won it again in 1960, and by the start of this year had won a total of seven Grand Prix races—more than any active driver except Scotland's own two-time world champion, Jimmy Clark (TIME cover, July 9, 1965).
Brabham's victory in last week's Dutch Grand Prix was his third for 1966. It practically sewed up a third world title for the tall Aussie, and it came at the direct expense of Clark, who has been plagued by chronic mechanical failures in his 2.2-liter Lotus-Climax, has yet to win a race this season. Driving a more powerful (by 55 h.p.) 3-liter Brabham-Repco that he designed and built himself, Jack allowed Clark to take the lead, then forced such a fast pace that the cooling system in Jimmy's overworked Lotus gave up. Clark limped in third. Averaging 100.6 m.p.h., Brabham beat Britain's Graham Hill to the checkered flag by a full lap. Asked a Dutch reporter: "Don't you think it is extraordinary and astonishing that you are leading in this world championship at your age?" Replied Jack: "Why?"