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Tony Brooks
Photo: J. Hardman/Getty Images
The very story of how Tony Brooks got into racing is an anecdote too good to untold.
His mother wanted to get a car and asked her son Tony to look for a vehicle.
Brooks found what he was looking for and put a Healey Silverstone in front of his mother's door, 104 hp, a racing monster, completely unsuitable for traffic.
The parents took the hint with the fence post, the son really wanted to be a racing driver.
And he became one of the best.
But the young Tony was actually destined for a completely different career.
The father was a dentist, so the son should and had to become one too.
While he dreamed of Formula 1, Brooks pursued his studies in dentistry at the same time.
From sports cars to Formula 1
In order to have both in the end: Shortly after the exam Brooks drove his first official race in Formula 1 in 1956. Of course at Silverstone, and as fate would have it: Brooks stuck the gear stick, he drove into the limit, and the freshly graduated Dentist suffered a fracture of the jaw.
By now he had gotten his nickname: The racing dentist.
With sports car racing Brooks had approached the premier class.
Aston Martin took notice of him and offered him a Formula 1 cockpit.
Brooks was supposed to drive the Sicilian Grand Prix for the racing team, which was highly renowned at the time, even if he wasn't part of the official Formula 1 calendar.
Victory in the very first race
However, the car was extremely prone to repairs and errors, the engine was tuned by the technicians to the maximum load, so Brooks was only allowed to do a few test laps.
The engineers were too afraid that the car would otherwise weaken again and retire from the actual race.
As a complete novice, Brooks got into a car that he hardly knew - and won the race with ease.
After that, his path in Formula 1 was mapped out, via the racing teams BRM and Vanwall, big numbers at the time, today only known to insiders, he went to Ferrari.
Brooks had already made a name for himself at Vanwall, winning the only Formula 1 race held on Berlin's Avus after the war.
In his own opinion it was the best race of his life.
And he would probably have been even more successful if abrasions and burns hadn't plagued him all year round.
Brooks had an accident at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and as a reminder he had a fist-sized hole in his hip area for months.
Colleague of the great Stirling Moss
His team-mate was the great Stirling Moss, both had what were actually the best cars in the competition in 1958, but took away the points from each other – in the end Mike Hawthorn was the laughing third for Ferrari and became world champion.
A year later, Hawthorn died in an accident.
The motor sport of those years, it was a game with death.
On the weekend when Brooks triumphed at the Avus, Frenchman Jean Behra, one of his colleagues, died in an accident during the supporting program.
After that, everyone continued to drive, everyone knew that the worst could happen to them at any time.
Brooks replaced Hawthorn at Ferrari and was considered a major title contender for 1959.
The Brit was close to the title up until the final race, but in the final race, at Sebring, the US Grand Prix, Brooks' car was touched by his German team-mate Wolfgang Graf Berghe von Trips early in the race and he had to have his technicians take care of it get checked.
Car thoroughly checked
Normally this would have been done quickly, but Brooks took all the time in the world to check the car, giving his rival Jack Brabham a crucial lead.
Brooks, who was a devout Catholic and also attended the service on every Sunday of the race, later explained that he didn't want to risk his life.
You have to honor life, "I've seen too many friends die." So he was only vice world champion.
After that, Brooks continued to drive in Formula 1 for two more years, but he had also lost the joy of it given the bloodletting that the sport was suffering.
In 1961 he ended his career and then devoted himself to the restoration of historic motorsport vehicles.
Until his death on Tuesday at the age of 90, he was the oldest surviving Formula 1 Grand Prix winner, a gentleman of the old school.
When Stirling Moss was once asked which drivers he could have wished for for a racing team of his choice, without hesitation he named the legendary Jim Clark – and Tony Brooks.