Motor-Racing B. McLaren To Be No. 1 Driver For Cooper

Press, Volume C, Issue 29657, 30 October 1961, Page 6

Motor-Racing B. McLaren To Be No. 1 Driver For Cooper

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, October 29. The New Zealand racing driver, Bruce McLaren will be No, 1 driver for the Cooper works team this coming season. The Australian, Jack Brabham, who won the

world drivers’ championship in 1959 and 1960 for Cooper's, will break a long association with the firm to branch out on his own, said McLaren, after arriving in Auckland by air this afternoon. It was stall undecided who would be his teammate, said McLaren. After a racing season which had been “almost an anti-

climax’’ after the successes of the previous two years. Cooper’s would now be really trying to break the dominance held by the Ferraris this year, said McLaren. In the New Zealand grand prix at Ardmore on January 6. McLaren will race the C. T. Atkins Cooper he has taken over, with the special 2.7litre Coventry-Climax motor used by Brabham when he came ninth at Indianapolis earlier this year. Brabham will have a similar unit here, the one he used in practice for Indianapolis, according to McLaren. With the extra power developed by this motor in the middle revolution ranges. McLaren expects the race should be the fastest yet. McLaren will also be a definite starter at Wigram, and hopes to race at Teretonga Park and at Warwick Farm. Sydney. However, he has only the one car, and expects that both Brabham and Moss will have two. McLaren considers his driving has improved, although his results have not been as good as last season, when he was runner-up in the world championship. McLaren will marry Miss Patricia Broad, in Christchurch on December 6. The honeymoon will be “somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere.”