Former Ferrari driver Tony Brooks dies aged 90

Former Scuderia Ferrari driver Tony Brooks, a two-time Formula 1 race winner with the Maranello team and former World Championship runner-up, has sadly passed away at the age of 90.

He participated in 39 Formula One World Championship Grands Prix, debuting on 14 July 1956, achieving six wins, 10 podium finishes and 75 career points. He was third in the World Drivers’ Championship in 1958 with Vanwall and second in 1959 with Ferrari. He also scored the first win by a British driver in a British car in a Grand Prix since 1923, driving a Connaught at Syracuse in 1955 in a non-championship race.

Tony Brooks, known affectionately as the ‘Racing Dentist’ due to his family links and training in dentistry was, along with Stirling Moss, considered one of the best drivers to not become Formula 1 World Champion. Such was his success that only Stirling Moss, five-time World Champion Juan Manuel Fangio and Alberto Ascari won more races than Brooks in the premier class in the 1950s – with his six wins and 10 podiums coming from only 38 starts in Formula 1.

Tony Brooks joined the Maranello team for the 1959 Formula 1 season and was the undisputed team leader in a squad that also included Phil Hill and rookie Dan Gurney. Two wins put him in title contention with Jack Brabham (works Cooper) and Moss (Rob Walker Cooper).

The cancellation of the Belgian Grand Prix and clutch issue at the start of the Italian GP robbed him of a chance to win either or both races in which the powerful front-engined Ferraris were well-fancied, so he went into the Sebring decider with an outside chance of the crown. A hit at the start from teammate Wolfgang von Trips and subsequent precautionary pitstop – Brooks wasn’t one to take unnecessary risk – meant the best he could do was third. He thus finished second to Brabham in the final standings.

But his qualities were known not only in Formula 1: Tony Brooks also competed to a high level in sports car racing – winning the 1000km Nurburgring race in 1957 and the Tourist Trophy a year later at Goodwood.