On the flat, twisting course laid out on an old military airfield near Sebring, Fla., the world's best drivers and fastest cars met last week in the first Grand Prix of the United States. The man to beat was a broad-faced Aussie named Jack Brabham, 33. A steady man with a mechanic's instinct for pushing his low-slung Cooper-Climax no harder than metal and rubber can stand, Brabham rose out of the ranks this year (TIME, Aug. 10) to take the lead in the world driving championship.
One man with an outside chance to outdrive Brabham for the championship in the last Grand Prix race of 1959 was Britain's nonchalant Stirling Moss, 30, who, on a good day and when his car holds up, is probably the world's best driver. But Moss, who had earlier broken the speed limit and outraced an enraged sheriff on his way to the track, slowed to a halt on the fifth lap in an ooze of black smoke from a crippled gearbox. That left Britain's Dentist-Driver Tony Brooks as the only other threat to Brabham, but Brooks was having trouble getting his Ferrari out of the turns.
Although his championship was safe, Brabham decided to try to win the title in style. Burning .rubber, he was in first place and in the last mile of the 218.4-mile race when his Cooper-Climax faltered and stopped, just 500 yds. from the finish line; a leak had emptied his fuel tank. Brabham climbed out of the cockpit and began pushing his 1,000-lb. car home, while the crowd of 15,000 cheered him on. As he pushed his way down the stretch, three cars flashed by to finish, led by his protege, 22-year-old New Zealander Bruce McLaren in another Cooper-Climax. But World Champion Jack Brabham doggedly kept going, gave one last shove at the line, collapsed on the pavement, retched, quickly recovered enough to grin: "They should have built that machine with a rope on the front end of it."