Geoff Brabham

By H.A. Branham

Geoff Brabham’s emergence on the IMSA Camel GT circuit was sudden, swift, and stunning, unlike anything previously witnessed in the headlining GTP class.

Brabham, an Australian and the son of three-time Formula One champion Sir Jack Brabham, won four consecutive IMSA GTP titles from 1988-91, driving the blue-and-red Nissan GTP ZX Turbo for the first three years, a car that is also a 2024 IMSA Hall of Fame inductee. In ’91. Branham drove three new Nissan types –the R909C, NPT90 and NPT91.

Brabham took Nissans to IMSA victory lanes 25 times in those four seasons, at that point an unparalleled dominance of the fabulous GTP arena. And despite failing to win the Rolex 24 At Daytona, Brabham co-drove to victories in the Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring (1989, ’91) and the Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen (’88-89) twice apiece, more than adequately negating criticism of the Nissans’ endurance racing capabilities.

Prior to IMSA, Brabham’s bloodline was already manifesting. In 1974, his third season of competition, he won the Australian Formula 2 title. He was Formula Super Vee champion in ‘79 and then won the revived Can-Am series championship in 1981.

Six years of IndyCar open-wheel competition followed. Could’ve gone better; but it was a solid stint, nonetheless. Brabham finished eighth in the championship points three times (1982, ’84, ’87). In his 10 Indianapolis 500 starts he posted two top-fives, a fifth in 1981 and a fourth in ’83.

After IndyCar it was on to IMSA, where the sanctioning body’s GTP class had been getting flogged by Porsche 962s for a number of seasons.

Now we’re getting to the sudden/swift/stunning situation that turned the class on its head.

Brabham and Elliott Forbes-Robinson had won the Miami Grand Prix in 1987, one of five IMSA appearances that season for the Australian, concurrent with his last IndyCar campaign. In ’88, after sitting out the Rolex 24 and Sebring’s 12 hours, Brabham went on an eight-race win streak, co-driving at times with John Morton and Tom Gloy. That produced the first of his four GTP championships, while previewing what was to come.

The GTP scene, “was fantastic in the 1980s,” Brabham told RacerViews in a post-career interview. “The cars were just awesome, we had full ground effects – they were proper race cars. The Nissan, depending on where the rules were – we had anything from 800 to 1,100 horsepower through the years that I was running. The competition was really fierce – particularly with Tom Walkinshaw’s Jaguars. He was over there with the Jaguar Team, there was us with the Nissans, there were Dan Gurney’s Toyotas and in the beginning, there were Porsches and Corvettes.

“The rivalry was really fierce on the racetrack and the level of competition was extremely high. I look quite fondly back on that era.”

By 1993, the Nissan preeminence had faded and factory support dried up, as did a ride for Brabham. Gurney’s team had a lock on GTP victory lanes. Brabham looked to Europe, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, for a career-defining run – and he got it, winning with Frenchmen Eric Helary and Christophe Bouchet, co-driving a Peugeot 905. None of the trio had ever completed Le Mans before. Brabham was 0-for-2; his co-drivers were Le Mans rookies. Footnote: 905s finished 1-2-3.

“This is unbelievable, just fantastic,” Brabham said that day. “The team was excellent, both in the preparation of the car and in the pit stop. We didn’t have any tactics, just to go as fast as possible …”

Never was a problem for Geoff Brabham.