After a faltering start to the defence of his title with disappointments in Argentina and Monaco, Jack Brabham struck a rich vein of form in mid-season, steering the Cooper to victories in four successive Grands Prix – Holland, Belgium, France and Britain. With three races left and Brabham in a commanding position, the championship moved to the street circuit of Oporto for the Portuguese Grand Prix. Each 4⅔ mile (7.4km) lap presented a variety of challenges for driver and car, not least cobblestones and tramlines. It was likely to be a bumpy ride.
Among the 15 starters for the 55-lap race were Stirling Moss, recovered from a crash at Spa when a wheel came off, and world motorcycle champion John Surtees in only his second four-wheel Grand Prix. To the surprise of many who thought he would struggle to make the transformation to cars, Surtees put his Lotus on pole, ahead of Dan Gurney’s BRM, Brabham and Moss. On the third row, Scotsman Innes Ireland was puzzled to see an Irish flag fluttering above his Lotus, the race organisers having deduced from his surname that he was Irish!
Having stalled his engine on the grid in the previous race (the British Grand Prix), Graham Hill was determined not to miss out again and edged the BRM forward from the second row while waiting for the flag to fall. Finding Hill at their shoulder, the drivers ahead also inched forward so that by the time the flag eventually fell, the entire front row plus Hill were a good car’s length over the line. Gurney shot into the lead, only for Brabham to overhaul him at the first corner. Undaunted, Gurney fought back immediately and regained the lead under braking at the end of the straight. And so it was Gurney out in front at the start of a highly eventful lap two.
‘After the straight and the left-hander,’ remembered Brabham, ‘you go uphill and along the tramlines. Then you have to turn left but the tramlines go straight on. I came up and moved inside to overtake but I got myself into the tramlines going straight on like a tram and it was obvious I wouldn’t be able to stop. I thought, I’ll have to stay in the tramlines all the way to the depot, wherever that is.’ Finally he slowed and managed to extricate the Cooper before turning round and heading back towards the circuit. The crazy detour had cost him six places, plunging him from second to eighth.
After five laps Gurney led Surtees by five seconds with Moss in third, but on lap 11 Gurney spun and fell back to fifth. He later retired on lap 25 with engine trouble. Moss was hampered by similar problems which required a number of pit stops, so that at halfway Surtees held a comfortable lead from Phil Hill and Brabham. These two had been enjoying quite a scrap until, on lap 29, Hill missed a gear and ended up among the straw bales which had been spread liberally around the edge of the course as a safety feature.
Almost from the outset fuel had been seeping on to Surtees’ canvas driving shoes and on lap 36 this caused his foot to slip off the brake pedal as he was approaching a twisty section. The car hit a kerb, the collision bursting the radiator. With Surtees out of the race, Brabham now led by a minute from his team-mate Bruce McLaren and, after his earlier adventures, the reigning champion was not going to let it slip. The Coopers came home in that order for Brabham’s fifth Grand Prix win in a row and his second successive World Drivers’ Championship. Fighting food poisoning to finish third at Oporto (which must have made every cobblestone a particularly unpleasant experience) was young Lotus driver Jim Clark in his first full season.
Meanwhile Moss ensured that the race concluded in almost as much chaos as it had started. He was lying in fifth on lap 51 when his brakes locked entering a corner. After stalling the car, he tried to restart, but while he was struggling the race finished. Realising this, he turned the car in the opposite direction, restarted it downhill, did a U-turn and crossed the line to finish what he thought was an ingenious fifth. Alas, his initiative was not rewarded and he was subsequently disqualified for driving in the wrong direction.