Warwick Brown
by FA Pitz / 1975 May Formula magazine USA
If Warwick Brown has his way, he will become the first Australian to win the World Championship since Jack Brabham. The 25-year-old Tasman winner has made no bones about the fact that he is aiming for Fl and has had that goal in mind for several years.
“I feel sure that I’m one of those people who have their life planned. I’ve had such since I was probably 15 or 16.1 think I can say, at this stage, that it’s going according to plan but, of course, not quick enough; it never goes quick enough.”
Although he expresses satisfaction with his present position as one of the world’s leading F-5000 drivers, everything about him carries an underlying current of impatience. To him, Fl is the final goal and everything else is preparation.
Brown is an unusually candid driver and has been criticized for his outspokenness. However, his bluntness is total for he will freely admit his mistakes as well as his successes.
Warwick Brown was born in Wahroonga, which is located a few miles north of Sidney. The son of a civil engineer, he excelled in school sports and finished out his final year as captain of the boxing team. His interest in motor sports developed early and he became a devoted spectator at the nearby Warwick Farm circuit.
“I never really had any practical aspirations as a driver. I used to watch all those fellows driving Sprites and MGB’s and think that one day I’d like to get one of my own.”
Warwick’s new activity did not generate parental approval, however. His family was very much against racing and his father, who was the dominate figure in the household, “believed that anybody who drove over 35 mph had some mental problem”.
Warwick was about 17 when his father died and, sometime later, his aspirations bloomed into something more than just spectating. His relationship with close friend and neighbor Pat Burke acquired a new aspect.
“I used to drive him to the Bathurst saloon car races twice a year in my Lotus Elan. About the third trip, he mentioned that I ought to go motor racing. I thought about it for a tenth of a second and said, ‘You’ve got me’ and away we went.”
In early 1970, the new team purchased a F3 Brabham. “It was a BT8 updated to a BT15. We bought the chassis from a young fellow who had been racing it for some years in Sydney. It was rather ironical because he was dating a girl friend of mine who had very expensive tastes. I was at the stage of breaking up with her and moving on. He couldn’t afford to keep the car and her, too, so I bought the car and he got his girl and everyone was happy1.”
“I had my first race at Warwick Farm and I got second in class which was the only time that I was beaten in that car.” Over the next nine months, Warwick ran up an impressive string of victories before the Brabham was replaced by an M4A McLaren. This was the ex-Piers Courage/ Neil Allen car.
“We spent about 12 months in the McLaren doing the Gold Star Series and I think my best place was a third behind the F-5000 cars.”
In early 1972, Pat Burke Racing acquired their first F-5000 car, a McLaren M10B. “We picked this up just prior to the Australian side of the Tasman. It wasn’t really a competitive car at the time although we feel that we had it going probably as quick as any other M10B. At that stage, I was consistently faster than the new Lola T-300’s driven by Kevin Bartlett and a couple of others.”
“The McLaren had all those no-nos like 15-inch wheels which were not competitive. It was quite heavy and steered like a truck. Yet, the only person in Australia who beat me consistently was Frank Matich. I was picking up seconds and thirds in the Gold Star that year.”
For their first assault on the Tasman series, the team acquired the ex-Bob Muir Lola T-300 and Warwick’s performances became a high point of the series. At Pukekohe, he lost a certain third when the car developed a fuel leak. He finished third at Levin and, on his first visit to Wigram, Brown finished a very close second to Graham McRae and set the lap record.
Following the rain and seventh place at Teretonga, he went to Surfer’s Paradise for the first Australian round and the accident that nearly terminated his career.
“I was on the warmup laps before the race and I crashed at Dunlop Corner at the end of the straight. I was going through at about 160 mph when I had a tire break its seal on the rim; it probably happened on the straight but I didn’t have the experience to recognize it. I lost the steering and the car plowed straight ahead. I went about 100 feet and ran up a fairly high grass embankment, across an access road, and into a wall on the other side. Went end over end a few times and landed about 90 feet away in a drain, upside down and still in the car.”
“There was nothing left at the front of the car except my legs; they were broken in three places and I also had a broken vertebra and a few other things.”
Brown spent three and a half months in the hospital and it was another six months before he could walk without the aid of crutches. A small battery was inserted in his right leg and wasn’t removed until the following year.
“I had my first race again at the first Tasman round of ’74. We had the first Lola T-332 produced and we got it only ten days before the race; it was really a monumental job getting the whole thing together. We spent the first few races getting sorted and they were very hard on me, too.”
Despite his handicaps, Brown found himself finishing in the top six and was back in contention by the middle of the series. That elusive first Tasman victory did not come until the final race at Adelaide.
“The win put us on a very positive step for 1974, I stayed in Australia for several months but it was a bit of a problem what to do because the racing wasn’t really anything down there and 1 had had overseas ambitions for some time.”
“After doing one Gold Star race and finishing second, I decided, for financial reasons, that the States was the place to go. So, I came to California to do the three races at Ontario, Laguna Seca, and Riverside.”
“On reflection, I think that the trip was probably the biggest gamble that I ever took. I arrived with one Lola, one spare engine, and a couple sets of wheels, figuring that I could get by on the prize money.”
The gamble paid off. Brown emerged as a front runner in the hottest competition ever seen in F-5000. At Ontario, he finished a close second in his heat but fell to 11th in the final due to tire problems. He captured fifth at Laguna Seca and ended his effort with a fine third at Riverside.
Brown started the new season by scoring two Tasman victories and becoming
the first Australian ever to win the championship. The one-point victory margin doesn’t reflect on his overall performance for, if tire and mechanical problems had not intervened, Brown would have won seven of the eight races on the trot.
Presently, Warwick is living near the McCormack Racing facility in San Juan Capistrano, having developed an appetite for pancakes and a fondness for American ‘birds’. Brown will drive one of Jack Mc-Cormack’s Talons in the upcoming U.S. series, McCormack supplying two complete chassis while Brown brings the mechanics and Peter Malloy engines that have powered his cars since 1972.
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about Warwick Brown
