Cooper T53: the “first Brabham” to win the F1 World Championship

Brabham took his first Drivers’ Championship in 1959 with the Cooper T51, the rear-engined machine that revolutionised F1. It was from this car that the T53 was developed for 1960, a car “designed for Jack Brabham”, into which the driver himself put a lot of work.

“The T53 I think was the car from which Jack Brabham took his most influence,” Friedrichs said. “It was developed out of the T51, but it's completely different, especially in the suspension.”

The T51’s leaf spring suspension was replaced with a two-coil spring set up, while the T53 was also constructed from a new tubular steel frame clad in aluminium. The ERSA gearbox was swapped for the Cooper-Knight CS-5 five-speed gearbox and the driver’s seat was reclined even lower, adding the car’s ‘lowline’ name.

The 2.5-litre, four-cylinder Coventry-Climax engine was untouched, but it was mounted an inch closer to the ground to lower the centre of gravity, which improved the car’s handling and aerodynamics.

All this work meant T53 arrived slightly late to the 1960 Formula 1 season. Brabham and team-mate Bruce McLaren drove T51s at the season opener in Argentina (which McLaren won), so the pair had their first Grand Prix outing with the new T53 three months later in Monaco.

McLaren continued his good form by finishing runner-up to Stirling Moss, but Brabham’s retirement in Argentina was followed with disqualification at Monte Carlo, after receiving a push start after spinning off.

That dreary beginning would soon be forgotten, however, as Brabham returned after the Indianapolis 500 to storm through a run of five consecutive victories at the wheel of the T53, in a campaign where only the top six results counted. That remarkable demolition of the opposition ensured he retained his Drivers’ Championship with two races to spare, while McLaren’s five podiums alongside his opening round win ensured Cooper also kept hold of the Manufacturers’ Championship, ahead of Lotus and Ferrari.

Overall, Brabham’s T53 — chassis F2-8-60 — raced 18 times in the year following its May 1960 debut, winning on ten occasions in the hands of the great Australian. Cooper went on to develop the T55 for 1961, but the T53 remained a hugely popular competitor, with eight teams running cars now mostly with 1.5-litre engines to fit the new regulations.

Jack Brabham left Cooper in 1961 to begin the project that would cement his name in history, and his T53 was shipped down under where it raced until the spring of 1961. Its last outing came at the International Trophy at Silverstone in May where it was driven by Ron Flockhart, after which the car set sail for California, sold to Dan Herman in the middle of 1962.

Herman had planned on racing the car with the addition of an American engine, but this never materialised and in January 1965 he sold it on to John Coyle. He also never used the car, and it was sold again, though still in California, to Steve Froines in the mid-1980s. Froines raced the car at Monterey into the next decade until it was bought by Rodney Smith in 1999.

Under Smith’s stewardship, F2-8-60 was raced by Mark Gillies at Monterey and the Goodwood Revival in 2004, as well as by Brabham himself in 2000. Smith passed away in 2007, but his wife Mary kept hold of the car until selling it to Friedrichs in 2015.

Friedrichs became interested in owning a T53 after having the opportunity to test one, but it was only afterwards that he was informed the only known remaining original model — Smith’s — was not up for sale. He then spent hours labouring over an email to introduce himself to Mary Smith. “Half an hour later, Mary responded: ‘How did you know that I only yesterday decided to sell the car?’ Immediately I booked my next flight to San Francisco."

“We spent the weekend talking about family, God and the world. On the Saturday afternoon, she said, ‘don't you want to see the car? So, she allowed me into her husband’s shed and I put down a proper offer. I left the place without a deal because a very good friend was also interested, and only just before Christmas she called me and said, ‘Merry Christmas, Rudi, it's yours’. I will never sell this car in my life.”

It was Rod Jolley, fellow racer of a Cooper T53 and competitor in the 2026 Richmond & Gordon Trophies, who sparked Friedrichs’ interest in the car. He now competes with it all over the world in the Historic Grand Prix Car Association, and when it comes to racing a machine with such pedigree there was never going to be much Friedrichs would look to change.

“You can't beat a World Champion in setting up a car. When I bought the car [the set-up was] rock hard. I didn't know better, so I drove it for a while, and then we decided to take it back to Jack Brabham's original set-up; all of a sudden, I was the front driver.”

“So, the car is absolutely original. It still has the mechanical fuel pump in the car, there's a magneto. It's running on coil and distributor now, but we still have all the old radiators. Everything is still in the car as it was in 1960 so it's probably the most original car in this paddock here.”

Speaking to him ahead of the 2026 fixture, Friedrichs stated a target of fourth or fifth in the Richmond & Gordon Trophies race, but it looked like he was on course to place even higher when he set the fastest time in Official Practice, qualifying two tenths quicker than Will Nuthall. Sadly, at the very end of the session he crashed out and was unable to line-up for Saturday’s race, which was won by Nuthall, adding a seventh victory for the T53 in this contest.

We did however also get to enjoy a glimpse of the car in action as part of our Jack Brabham Celebrations, where it was joined on track on Friday morning by a host of special machines that shaped the career of the three-time World Champion. For Friedrichs, the moment would have been incomplete without the presence of the T53.

“I think it's a very important car for Jack Brabham. He won the 1959 World Championship and then put a lot of development into the [T53] to win the 1960 World Championship. Some people say this is the first Brabham. Only then, with all this experience and knowledge, he started to build his own racing cars and obviously quite successfully, because six years later he won a third World Championship in his own car. Never been done before, will never happen again.”

Brabham’s involvement in the T53 and the learnings he took from it mark the origins of an unparalleled motorsport legacy. “Usually people are not aware of what an important car it is,” Friedrichs said, “but the moment they get aware people are amazed and show a lot of respect for the car.” That was certainly the case at the 2026 Goodwood Revival, where it was an honour to showcase this and the many other cars that built the mystique of the Jack Brabham name.

Historic images courtesy of Getty Images. 

Goodwood photography by Pete Summers and Joe Harding.

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