David
Brabham

David Brabham was born in London on 5 September 1965 and grew up in Australia. He is the youngest son of three-time Formula One world champion Jack Brabham, and his brothers Geoff and Gary also raced. He discovered karting at the age of 17 and began racing karts professionally in Australia in 1983. After a one-make series with the Ford Laser in 1985, he moved on to Formula Ford 1600 and Australian Formula 2. He won that category's 1987 championship, which that year consisted of a single race run as a support event to the Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide. In 1989 he moved to Europe and won the British Formula Three Championship with the Bowman team.

His Formula One career began in 1990 with Brabham, the team that carried his family name. He was entered for 14 races and started eight of them. He failed to qualify at San Marino, and his first start came at Monaco, where his father had won in 1959. He also qualified for the season finale in Australia. At the end of the season he was replaced at the team. In 1991 he won the Spa 24 Hours in a Nissan Skyline alongside Naoki Hattori and Anders Olofsson.

He returned to Formula One in 1994 with Simtek, qualifying for and starting all 16 races. At the San Marino Grand Prix his team-mate Roland Ratzenberger died during qualifying. Brabham took part in the race and retired after a suspension failure, and the team decided to see out the season together. In total he was entered for 30 races and started 24, without a win or a podium finish.

He left Formula One at the end of 1994 for touring cars, starting with BMW in the British championship in 1995. In 1996 he won the Japanese GT500 championship in a McLaren F1 GTR, and in 1997 he won the Bathurst 1000 with Geoff in a BMW 320i. The pair were awarded the victory after the finish, when team-mates Paul Morris and Craig Baird were disqualified.

His sports car career brought further successes. In 1998 he won the Professional Sports Car Championship in the United States with Panoz, and the 1999 Petit Le Mans. He finished second at Le Mans in 2003 with Bentley and won the GT1 class there with Aston Martin in 2007 and 2008. In 2009 he won the 24 Hours of Le Mans outright for Peugeot with Alexander Wurz and Marc Gené, becoming the fourth Australian to do so after Bernard Rubin, Vern Schuppan and his brother Geoff. In 2009 and 2010 he won the prototype title in the American Le Mans Series with Highcroft Racing.

Source: Wikipedia, “David Brabham”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.