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David Brabham podcastProject Brabham, Le Mans, Formula Ford, Mike Thackwell, Formula 3000, F1, the ALMS, Jack Brabham… There wasn’t much not discussed when the podcast team sat down with David Brabham.Fueled with mince pies, chocolate and fudge brownies and a bottle or three of wine Nigel Roebuck, Damien Smith, Rob Widdows and Simon Arron bring you the last podcast of 2014.If you’d like to find out more about Project Brabham please visit the official site www.brabham.co.uk/project-brabhamIf you would like to subscribe to the Motor Sport podcasts then visit our iTunes page.To find all our podcasts in one convenient place, visit our SoundCloud page.To listen, please scroll to the bottom of the page.Transcription Rob Widdows: Hello again, everybody. And thank you so much for joining us, for what is the last Motor Sport Magazine podcast of 2014. Aww, but we’ll be back in 2015. And we might just think very quickly about who we’ve had on the show this year. It’s quite a list. John McGuinness, Gordan Murray, Emanuelle Pirro, James Weaver, Andy Wallace. They came together. Perry McCarthy, Pat Simmons, Derek Bell, Jonathan Palmer, and today, David Brabham. Ta da. Wow, that’s a name to conjure with isn’t it? One of the big, big names of post-war motor racing. Brabham, I like it. We’ve got lots and lots of questions. We’ll be with David for at least an hour today and in case you hadn’t noticed we’re all in the Christmas spirit. Aren’t we Damien?Damien Smith: Yes. That’s as, that’s as good as it gets.RW: And our website editor, Ed Foster has very kindly provided some chocolate brownies, some mince pies, some wine, good grief. But, never drink while broadcasting, it’s one of my rules. Okay, Damien.DS: Lucky we’re so professional, isn’t it?RW: Yes, yes for a change.Simon Arron: As a, as a diabetic I’m only, I’m only going to be able to have the wine, not the chocolate brownies or the mince pies.RW: Fine. That’s okay. Okay. Around the table as well as David, of course, we have already been to Damien Smith. We have Simon Aaron and we have of course the vulnerable Nigel Roebuck. David Brabham, you’ve just come back from France. What were you plotting in France?David Brabham: While you were having red wine, I had red wine in France, as well.RW: I bet you did.DB: I did, yeah. Well, , obviously with our plans for the future of Brabham is, is to go back to racing as a team. To race at Le Mans, to race in the World Endurance Championship, so I went down to have a look at the Ligier down there because obviously that’s one of the cars that we’d be considering. As well as talking to the ACO finding out more about their plans. Well what’s the future look like? What have we got to be aware of? So yeah, it was very good. It was a really good trip, very worthwhile and I’m now back.RW: It’s a big, big project this, because motor racing is as we all know fiercely expensive, fiercely competitive. When did you start to hatch the plot to bring the name back into top line racing?DB: Well, it’s about nine years ago actually. You’re probably thinking, well what happened in those nine years, ? Well, it’s been probably well documented. But , 19 years ago I started to think ahead of time and go, what am I going to do when I stop driving? Because, I’d seen a lot of drivers, including my brother get to the end and, and then what? what I mean? And I didn’t want to get into that situation. So I started to think about what it is I could do. And , I thought well what? We got this name Brabham, but as a family we do absolutely nothing with it, ? Dad went off and did his thing, , my brothers and I went off and did our thing. And there’s never been any sort of group thing where, , Brabham is a brand that represents everything that the brand is and what can we do with it. So I went to dad and said look, , we should do something with this. And of course, , I wanted to understand what trademarks he had because I remember sort of when Brabham finished in, in the early 90′s, there was a lot of things going on about the ownership of the name and, and , dad ended up paying some money for the name. I think he was offered a million quid to get the name back.RW: Bet that pleased him.DB: Yeah, well he, he wasn’t going to pay that, that’s for sure, but he did get it for a lot, lot cheaper than, than that. So by the time I went in there to have a look at it there were a few holes missing because for dad, , he was getting older. He was taking his eye off of the ball on that a little bit and someone in Germany saw an opportunity and registered Brabham and Brabham Racing, started up a business over there calling it Brabham Racing, The Legend Returns. It was building BMW M5s, spicing them up, and calling them BT92. So I only found that out once we’d sort of looked at the registrations, put our own in to start the protection of the name because until I had that I really couldn’t do anything. So obviously discovered that this guy had rejected, there was a rejection for our application. I was like, who the hell was this bloke, ? So by the time we figured it out, he’d launched his whole programme. So the only option really was to go to court to get the name back. And that took seven years in the German courts to basically get the name back. So, , I lost seven years of doing anything with the name.Nigel Roebuck: Why did it take so long? How could it take seven years?DB: Well it took from the process of us finding out that this guy existed, then to finding out okay, what’s the process? What are we going to do? I ended up getting a lawyer here in the UK, which then had to have a lawyer in Germany. And so we went through the process, we ended up going to court. We ended up winning the first court case, but of course they appealed. So then it had to go to the higher court of Germany. And these things just take ages before they come round again and you’ve got to do your homework. At the time I’d never realized how expensive going to court was. It’s just, it was horrendous. Luckily I had two racing programs going on or at the height of it was 2009 when I was racing in the American Le Mans Series with Highcroft and Le Mans with Peugeot, which was super, super stressful. It was bloody difficult.RW: The good thing is you’ve done it.DB: Yeah, once we went through the second, third time of court we finally won. It took nearly eight, nine months after the court case for the name to finally come back to us. And then it was a case of OK, what do we do with it? I see a lot of brands, you see them walking down the high street, and you see motor racing brands as well. What is the message they’re giving me?RW: What is the Brabham brand message? Is it sideways, gritty and…DB: What I did do is I got someone in who was a brand expert and told him to tell me what Brabham is. What do people think and feel about the brand? Basically after about 15 months of research and interviewing fans, and Brabham owners, and people within the sport, people dad worked with, people I worked with, we really did our homework on what the brand represents and it’s inspirational, it’s pioneering, innovation, engineering.RW: Absolutely.DB: They were the core messages. They were the DNA of what Brabham is. So, and of course when dad died, all the magazines, that’s all you saw was those headlines that were underneath Jack’s picture. So we got our branding right. And so then it was a case of OK, now we understand what that is. We have to come back into racing. But, as I’ve said many times before, for race teams to survive just as a race team year in, year out is really tough. Did I want to bring Brabham back into that industry like that, or should we be looking at something different? Is there an opportunity for Brabham as a brand to come back into racing and do something like it did years ago and was a game changer? Can we do something now? And this is where Project Brabham came about. Where we’ve come in and said we’re going to open the doors, we’re going to inspire fans to be involved.RW: Yeah, great.DB: It was all about communication between the fans and the team. We’d make decisions together and things like that. I’ve got 31 years of knowledge of a racing driver, as a professional driver for a long time, what does it take? We’re gonna create Brabham Digital, which is for fans and the drivers. And of course with engineers, to inspire engineers as well through racing. So people learn and experience through the team with an open door.RW: How much is Australia involved? Because Australia is such a big part of the whole background to the thing, isn’t it? Or is this a very British Brabham?DB: Well, it’s a very David Brabham programme, put it that way. Yes, I was born here, I was raised in Australia. I’ve spent more time here in the UK. I’ve traveled the world. I see myself more as a world citizen, more than from one particular country. And this program is a global initiative.RW: Fantastic, good.SA: Does the launch of this programme David… you said you were looking for something to do once you stop driving. Does this mean you’re actively now looking at winding down your own racing career?DB: Well, if you’ve noticed I haven’t done a lot the last two years…SA: But you are still involved.DB: Yeah, yeah I mean, I’ve done three races this year, big races. It’s like Daytona 24 Hours, Sebring, which we nearly won and the World Endurance Championship at Shanghai just the other month. So it was good to keep my eye in and everything. But for the last two years I’ve only done six or seven races because my main focus… I had to come to a point where I’ve just got to park my driving and get this program up and running.SA: Have you drawn a line under it then now?DB: No I haven’t drawn a complete line under it right now, but I’m getting more and more involved in what this is going to take. It’s not just starting a race team. It’s also creating Brabham Digital and the content… I mean it’s a massive, massive program. So I guess if, if you were me and I’m you, I’m interviewing me, and I’m saying what you want a job with me? Tell about what your days are like, how committed are you as a racing driver? I’d probably be struggling to employ myself.RW: Can we can we go back in time a bit because you were into football, weren’t you when you were younger.DB: I was the Ryan Giggs…RW: Were you now?DB… in Australia.SA: You were one of Manchester United’s local fans then I guess?DB: Yes I was! It’s funny because I obviously grew up in a family full of racing but it didn’t really interest me, there were beautiful trophies that people would just stare and look at. And I’d just walk past like they’re objects, because they didn’t mean anything, really. I was seven, eight, nine, ten when all that was happening. But I had a football in my hand and I’d go out every day and play football. And we had a really, really cracking team. I started when I was seven. I scored something like 38 goals in my first season. We won everything, absolutely everything. And then nine, ten, 11, and 12 years of age, we always made the final, which we lost every time but we were one of the strongest teams. And that was my passion, that’s all I thought about. And then my family decided that I needed to follow Gary and go farming, and go to an agricultural boarding school where they didn’t really play soccer. They just played Aussie rules. So my soccer was finished. I had asthma as a kid as well for about seven years during the time I played, and I went for a trial but I had an asthma attack so it never happened. Probably luckily so.RW: How did it go from football, to agriculture, to motor racing, where I guess it was pretty much going to end up? Wasn’t it, in the end?DB: Well, I never even during school, I never thought ‘oh, I’m going to be a racing driver’. I was groomed to be a farmer. We had a four-and-a-half-thousand-acre farm. My two brothers were racing, so I was the last one in the chain and dad thought ‘well, at least one of them is not interested in racing’. But what I was interested in while I was growing up on the farm and at school was speed. Because I would… I just loved getting in a farm vehicle, a tractor, a motor bike, it didn’t matter what it was. I had to get from A to B as fast as possible and as sideways as I could. So I should’ve been a rally driver.RW: You were putting that together with being a racing driver?DB: No, no, I didn’t even think about it. I left school at 16 and then went to a college to learn about wool, to be a wool classer. Dad didn’t want to pay for a wool classer so he thought I’d be quite good at that. And so I’d be there looking at all the microns and everything of what the wool was and putting it into categories. But then I went and spent three months in America, which was my first big trip away from Australia. And my brother Jeffery was racing in Indycars in ‘82. And that was really for me, the first time I saw racing for the first time. He was asked to help Al Unser Jr. win the CanAm Championship. So Geoff had won the CanAm Championship for VDS the year before, in ‘81. So they brought him in with a second car to help Al Junior. And so he said, ‘you want to come along and have a look?’ So I thought, ‘yeah great’. So I went and had a look, and he was getting his seat done, and I wondered around the workshop, which was one of the first workshops I had ever been to, in a race team. There was a go kart sitting over in the corner with the mechanic working on it. And I wander over there and I’m looking at this go kart, and the first words out of my mouth were, ‘do people race go karts?’ Exactly. And the bloke turned round and said ‘are you adopted?’ I said ‘no I’m not’. But he just couldn’t work it out. My brother Geoff said I’m his younger brother and I don’t even know people race go karts at 16, 17 years of age. No idea. Problem is, that was the moment, that was the spark, the change, sometimes you go a long life and something happens and you go on a different path. I just thought, ‘I loved driving fast anyway’, so it was like, ‘right okay, I wouldn’t mind having a go at that.’ Of course, when I went back to Australia and sat down with dad and said, ‘I’d really like to have a go in a go kart’, you can imagine the look on his face. It wasn’t full of smiles and ‘oh, yes he wants to be a racing driver’, it was ‘you got to be kidding!’RW: He didn’t want to pay for that either, did he?DB: No he didn’t because I convinced my neighbour I went to school with which was about three hours away from the farm. We were at boarding school together and we actually bought a second-hand go kart together. And we went off, we went off racing without dad’s help or influence.RW: Mike Thackwell got involved early on didn’t he? You did the Laser Championship. Have I got this right?DB: No, no Mike Thackwell, my brother-in-law because I married his sister Lisa… I obviously went through karting, Formula Ford. Graham Watson who was running Ralt Australia wanted to go over to do the Tasman Series and he wanted to take me in a Formula Ford and my brother Gary in a Formula Atlantic car and Mike Thackwell was going to be the other driver. I did a test in a Formula Atlantic car and the test went really well. I would have put it P3 on the grid from the previous race. And they said ‘right, you’re coming with us in the Atlantic car’, so that was the end of my Formula Ford career. I went off and I was his team-mate for a month racing all around New Zealand with Mike, a real legend of our sport. He was incredibly fast and he was only 26 when he retired, so he was 25 when I saw him. He was on it, I learned a lot. He was weird, but I learned a lot… You interviewed him a couple of years ago, didn’t you?RW: Well, yeah, partly thanks to some help from David actually I finally tracked him down.DB: He was great, wasn’t he?RW: Fantastic, I like him a lot, yeah. That’s maybe because I’m weird, but I like him lot.DB: Yeah, he’s good weird. I mean he’s not weird, he’s just a real…
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