abstract
| - After a turbulent couple of weeks for the Championship, the French Grand Prix arrived after a series of moves for the drivers started by John Surtees who had left Ferrari. The Englishman had joined the factory Cooper-Maserati outfit, and would share the front row with replacement Mike Parkes, and new Ferrari team leader Lorenzo Bandini. When the flag dropped Surtees surged ahead of his former employers, but a fuel pump failure less than halfway round the lap put Bandini into the lead. Jack Brabham had got ahead of Parkes at the start and so led the chase behind the Italian, while the Australian owner/driver's team mate Denny Hulme rose up to fourth in the opening stages. Bandini began to thrash out a lead over the early stages as Brabham and Hulme battled with Parkes over second. The rest of the Cooper-Maserati effort were chasing them down, while Dan Gurney and his self-entered Eagle-Climax was battling with them in the chasing pack. Elsewhere, Team Lotus were hampered in qualifying when Jim Clark withdrew having taken a bird to the face, while team mate Peter Arundell and replacement Pedro RodrÃguez would retire. Bandini looked all set to win with a quarter of the race still to run, but on lap 32 his throttle cable broke, sending him to the back of the field. Brabham inherited the lead with Parkes chasing him, the pair having slowly dropped Hulme, before entering a battle on the timesheets for victory. Ultimately, it was the double Champion who beat the debutante, as Brabham became the first man in Grand Prix history to win in a car carrying his own name.
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