Brabham: Victory feels good!
27/11/2004
David Brabham headed to this weekend's inaugural Bahrain GT Festival saying that the Coopers Racing team intended to 'give it a good shake', but admitted that taking victory alongside co-driver Allan Simonsen made up for a difficult season.
The sportscar ace linked up with the Australian Ferrari team at late notice, hoping for a strong run to put memories of a troubled year with the Krohn-Barbour Lamborghini ALMS squad to the back of his mind, but could not have hoped to dominate the Bahrain event in the manner which he and Simonsen achieved. Two of the three qualifying heats fell to the Coopers 550 Maranello, putting it in pole position for the one-hour, two-driver final, and the Brabham/Simonsen pairing was not headed thereafter, despite pressure from several potential rivals.
"It feels very good - especially as I hadn't won a race this year," Brabham told Crash.net moments after accepting his winner's trophy, "It's great to come out here and drive for an Australian team the first time it has been out of Australia. It was a good result for the team - and a fantastic result, too, for Bahrain. I think they have done a fantastic job with the event."
Despite having raced a 550 in last season's ALMS - and won races with it - Brabham knew that he faced a different prospect when teaming up with the Coopers team, which had previously contested the Australian Nations Cup series with the car. However, that did not prevent the team from counting itself among the possible favourites for victory.
"The Coopers 550 was certainly a lot different to what I drove last year with Prodrive," the driver confirmed, "It's not quite the same spec but, when we looked at the opposition, we were still confident that we would at least be competitive - and we won three out of four races."
He was also happy with the way he had fitted into the unfamiliar team - and pointed to one possible reason for success...
"We all seemed to gel really quickly - the whole team did a fantastic job," Brabham revealed, "Coopers racing is only a small team, but they did a great job with the car, which ran without problems and was reliable throughout. I knew Allan from previous trips to Australia, but it was the first time we had driven together. There's obviously something about driving with Danes - another Dane, another win!"
Despite having various offers awaiting his attention, including a possible seat in the new Aston Martin DBR9, Brabham admitted that he would be interested in fitting in with the coopers team should it opt for an international campaign in 2005.
"They're all keen to keep in contact about their plans for next year, but we'll just have to wait and see what those plans, and what mine, are," he reasoned, "If the two come together, then great. If not, then we'll try another time."
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