On the small Screen, the long-nosed cars flew over the bumps and bounced and skidded around the bends of the old forest circuit.

``A modern car wouldn't take off like that would it?'' replied Stirling Moss, standing at his side. ``Have the bottom knocked off it,'' agreed Brabham, who finished second in the 1967 race between New Zealanders the late Denny Hulme and third-placed Chris Amon.

With the new Formula One season gearing up for the opening chequered flag in Melbourne this weekend, Brabham and Moss came together in London to publicise an altogether different Formula-One race among the gum trees of Adelaide from April 9 to 11.

That one will feature three-litre cars of the 1966-69 vintage, relics of a distant and oftendeadly age when the now departed BRM, Lotus, Cooper-Maserati and Brabham were still among those fighting for honours.Brabham, now 72, and the oldest surviving Formula One champion, will drive one of the 20 original cars expected to be on the grid around the South Australian street circuit for the ``Formula Adelaide'' race. He still goes out in an old race car a couple of times a year and does not intend to take it easy.

``I haven't been in a race that hasn't been serious,'' he declared. ``Once the flag drops, that's it isn't it?'' Moss will not be competing but he joined Brabham, the only man ever to win the world title in a car of his own construction and bearing his name, in comparing modern Formula One and the sport that they knew and loved.

``Driving the cars in those days was very hard, it was a challenge,'' said Brabham, champion in 1959, 1960 and 1966. ``Today it seems to be all driven by computers, just pressing a button. Sounds too easy, doesn't it Stirling?''The tone was jocular, knowing thereality to be more complicated. Super-fit modern drivers, subjected to massive stresses both on and off the track while requiring the sharpest of reactions, are a different breed.

Moss preferred to draw a clear line between the eras, saying he watched the sport now as any other fascinated and informed spectator with no idea what it was like to drive a modern Formula One car on the limit.

``Drivers now are not the same sort of animal as they were then. You can't compare a modern driver with a 60s one,'' he said.

In Moss and Brabham's day the speeds were high but the cornering, braking and handling abilities were nowhere near as effective as on the modern cars.Fatalities, thankfully rare in the last decade of Formula One as technology has allowed drivers to walk away from high-speed shunts, were frequent.