Brabham's Charade Masterpiece: The 1967 French Grand Prix

The Circuit That No Longer Exists

The 1967 French Grand Prix was held at the Circuit de Charade — a volcanic road course carved into the mountains above Clermont-Ferrand that made the modern Spa look like a car park. The track used public roads that wound through lava flows, with virtually no run-off, minimal barriers, and blind crests that sorted the brave from the merely fast.

[Jack Brabham](/drivers/jack_brabham) won the race in a car bearing his own name. The Australian was 41 years old, a two-time world champion, and the founder-driver of [Brabham Racing Organisation](/teams/brabham-repco). Winning a Grand Prix in a car you built yourself remains one of the most remarkable achievements in the sport's history — and Brabham did it repeatedly throughout 1966 and 1967.

The Race

[Denny Hulme](/drivers/hulme), Brabham's teammate and the man who would take the 1967 championship, finished second — making it a Brabham 1-2 that demonstrated the team's engineering dominance. [Jackie Stewart](/drivers/stewart) completed the podium in the [BRM](/teams/brm), 5 seconds behind.

The attrition rate was savage. [Chris Amon](/drivers/amon) retired his Ferrari with throttle problems. [Dan Gurney](/drivers/gurney)'s beautiful [Eagle-Weslake](/teams/eagle-weslake) leaked fuel and retired. [Jochen Rindt](/drivers/rindt)'s Cooper-Maserati blew its engine. The volcanic road surface shredded tyres unpredictably and punished any mechanical weakness.

[Pedro Rodríguez](/drivers/rodriguez) finished sixth in a [Cooper-Maserati](/teams/cooper-maserati), scoring the final point on offer. Rodríguez was one of the great underrated talents of the 1960s — a Mexican driver who would win only two career races but whose wet-weather skill was considered the equal of anyone on the grid.

The Charade Circuit

The Circuit de Charade hosted the French Grand Prix five times between 1965 and 1972. At 8.055km, it was one of the longest circuits on the calendar — a narrow ribbon of tarmac that climbed and fell through the Auvergne mountains with the kind of gradient changes that would terrify a modern safety delegate.

The circuit was abandoned for F1 after 1972 following concerns about spectator safety and access for medical vehicles. A shorter version still exists and hosts club racing, but the original Grand Prix layout — the one Brabham mastered in 1967 — exists now only in footage and memory.

Brabham the Constructor-Driver

Jack Brabham remains the only driver in F1 history to win the World Championship in a car bearing his own name, achieving this in [1966](/seasons/1966). The 1967 French Grand Prix victory was one of four wins that season for the Brabham-Repco combination, though Hulme would ultimately take the title — beating his own boss by 5 points in the final standings.

The dynamic of a team owner being outperformed by his employee is one of F1's great awkward stories. Brabham, characteristically, said little about it publicly. He continued racing until 1970, retiring at 44 — an age that seemed ancient then and seems inconceivable now, when [Lewis Hamilton](/drivers/hamilton) at 41 is considered a veteran.

Explore the full [1967 season](/seasons/1967), or browse careers from every era on our [Drivers page](/drivers).