motorsportmagazine

Question

Having first turned the sport front-to-back with Cooper, the wonder from Down Under now stood it on its head by building from the top down.

Can someone please explain meaning of this sentence.
It is from the below mentioned webpage

http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/f1/history/the-rise-of-brabham/

Thomas Tompion · Accepted Answer

Hello Vishaljain.

I don't think you want to take these images very literally.

Both turning something front-to-back (back-to-front is the usual expression) and standing something on its head are figurative ways of indicating that someone is dramatically altering something; in this case, the sport, and the way competing teams operate.

The wonder from Down Under is a rhyming way of saying The remarkable person from Australia.

Building an enterprise from the top down means trying to establish something from an advanced stage and making component manufacturers adjust to the needs of that advanced stage, rather than establishing a very small company and allowing it to grow. The text explains this with the sentence Perceived wisdom was for other, less self-reliant, blokes. In other words, Brabham set about doing things in his own original way and showed scant regard for the established methods in the sport.

This is all written in spiky journalese, which aims to catch the eye, but which people who care about language often find deeply irritating.

Vishaljain23231 · Answer

Thank you so much. It really helped me o understand this passage. These kind of sentences are very difficult to understand, using so many idioms in a single sentence is very confusing.

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