Cooper T51
The Cooper T51 was a single- seater racing car produced by the Cooper Car Company . 1959 was Jack Brabham on a T51 world champion of Formula 1 .
Development history and technology
The Cooper T51 was built in 1959 for the 1.5-liter Formula 2 and was also used in the Formula 1 World Championship. In 1959 Jack Brabham dominated the world championship and won the constructor title for Cooper. The T51 was the first mid-engined racing car to win a Formula 1 title. It ended the front-engine era. Although Cooper experienced strong competition in 1960 with the Lotus 18 and the Porsche 718 , the titles went to Brabham and the British racing team again this year, with the T51 still being used at the beginning of the season.
The Formula 1 works cars were powered by the 2.5 liter Climax engine. However, the Italian Scuderia Centro Sud relied on a 2.5-liter Maserati engine. A BRM engine was used in Rob Walker's T51 , but this project was dropped after a race. Walker had also tested a Coletti axle assembly and found a solution to the power transmission problem. From the middle of the season, Walker started using Moss Coletti housings in Stirling's car , but the World Championship was already lost due to the failures in the spring. There were also two T51s with Ferrari engines, which were used by Scuderia Castellotti in 1960 .
In Formula 2, the T51s were equipped with Borgward engines by BRP in 1959 , but in this formula too, the competition from Lotus and Porsche grew stronger and stronger in 1960 and the Cooper were sometimes beaten quite convincingly.
Racing history
The T51 became the most important emergency vehicle for private teams in those years. Almost all of the top drivers of the time such as Lucien Bianchi , Tony Brooks , Olivier Gendebien , Masten Gregory , Dan Gurney , Bruce McLaren , Maurice Trintignant and Wolfgang von Trips drove the T51.
literature
- David Hodges: Racing cars from A – Z after 1945. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-613-01477-7 .
