During a time when the chief mechanic was also a fabricator, engine builder, car designer, race strategist, and team manager, Clint Brawner stood head and shoulders above his peers. His singular focus was on racing.
When his era’s outstanding mechanics, such as A.J. Watson, Jack Beckley, or George Bignotti, had something beyond their ability to fabricate or repair, they turned to Brawner. His philosophy was simple: “If a man made it, a man could fix it.”
An Arizona farm kid, he grew up maintaining the family’s tractors. This led to a fascination with cars and eventually to race cars. By 1950, he’d made his debut as a crew member at the Indianapolis 500 and steadily built a reputation for making temperamental race cars both fast and reliable.
His big break came in 1953 when Al Dean formed a Championship Car team and recruited Brawner to run it. That relationship lasted until Dean’s death in 1967.
Future 500 winner Bob Sweikert drove the Dean Van Lines Kuzma and ran well, winning the inaugural Hoosier Hundred in 1953. But another driver attracted Brawner’s renowned, keen eye for new talent.
Jimmy Bryan.
From 1954-57, Bryan won 19 Champ Car races for Brawner, including three consecutive Hoosier Hundreds and three National Championships. Still, at the end of 1957, Bryan left. They’d won many races, but not the one they both hungered for. The Indianapolis 500.
It’s puzzling how the 500 seemed to elude Brawner. Sweikert won the 500 the year after leaving Brawner’s team, as did Bryan. Then, A.J. Foyt claimed his first 500 two years after parting ways with Brawner. This was in 1961, the same year that Brawner’s driver, Eddie Sachs, should’ve taken the victory.
While leading within three laps of the checker, Sachs unexpectedly pitted with, he thought, worn tires. Until his death, Brawner insisted the tires could’ve gone the distance.
Sachs left in 1963, and Brawner experienced a couple of bleak seasons. His picks to replace Sachs either died or were severely injured in sprint cars. Those tragedies, however, opened the door for the driver who delivered unprecedented success. Mario Andretti.
Brawner built a new car for Andretti in 1965, his first rear-engine effort dubbed the Hawk. Andretti responded with a third-place finish and Rookie of the Year honors at Indianapolis.
After winning the National Championship, the duo seemed destined for greater success, including a 500 win. Other victories followed, but Andretti appeared to have inherited Brawner’s 500 curse.
From 1966 to 1968, Mario captured the Indianapolis 500 Pole twice but completed only 87 race laps. The announcer’s call, “Mario is slowing down,” became a part of Speedway lore.
Upon Dean’s death, flamboyant Andy Granatelli eventually bought his team and commissioned Lotus’s Colin Chapman to build state-of-the-art cars for the 1969 500. With Granatelli’s swarm of technicians and mechanics, Brawner’s role diminished, although he retained the chief mechanic title.
Andretti loved the high-tech Lotus. It was fast. But, only three days before Pole Day, a hub splintered. The ensuing crash destroyed the car and left Andretti with second-degree facial burns.
Brawner was back in the spotlight. He readied the ancient Hawk, and Andretti put in the middle of row one. However, attempting to streamline the car to enhance qualifying speed, Brawner removed the external oil cooler, intending to reinstall it for the race.
USAC originally approved this, but the rules required that a qualified car be raced without external changes, and A.J. Foyt insisted that they enforce it. USAC did.
Brawner was in trouble. However, mechanic Eamon ‘Chalkie’ Fullalove suggested that a radiator tucked under the seat would conform to the USAC ruling while cooling the hot-running, turbocharged Ford.
Brawner liked the idea, and he and ‘Chalkie’ worked through the night before the race installing it. At the green, Andretti jumped to the front. But within a few laps, the Ford ran hot. He backed off, the temperature dropped, and the race came to him.
Ironically, Brawner’s low-tech Hawk, built in his Phoenix garage and enhanced with some shade tree mechanic ingenuity, gave him, Andretti, and Granatelli their first and only 500 wins.
Brawner wrenched Andretti to yet another National Championship in 1969, and immersed himself in racing until the early 1980s. Skin cancer took him on December 23rd, 1987.
Hall of Fame chief mechanic Jim McGee, who Brawner mentored as a young man, perhaps summed up Brawner’s impact best. “He was rough and gruff but would give you the shirt off his back. His work ethic was incredible. Clint was the best mechanic in the business by far.”
