Product Review

The Winged Legends of the 1969 Grand Prix Championship. Sir Jack Brabham's race team built the Brabham BT26A/2 and was one of the first to experiment with aircraft-inspired wings to create increased downforce. The Scalextric version models the No.8 car raced by Jack Brabham in the International Trophy race at Silverstone, March 30th, 1969. Non-Championship races were often used to test developments on Grand Prix cars and in these early months of 1969 the negatives were yet to outweigh the positive aspects of high mounted aero-wings as the Lotus 49B cars would discover at the Spanish Grand Prix. Bruce McLaren, fellow Antipodean and friend of Brabham, was also running a high wing on his McLaren M7C No.6 car at the Spanish Grand Prix of 1969. During the race boh Lotus 49B cars driven by Graham Hill and Jochen Rindt crashed heavily after the high wings failed. The potential for these wings to fail with a high risk of injury to drivers and spectators was of grave concern and after just a few brief months of an exciting innovative development, such wings were banned by the FIA authorities. Bruce McLaren finished in 2nd place behind Stewart and ahead of Beltoise, Hulme and Surtees - the only drivers to finish the race.