45 Facts About Brabham

Brabham cars competed in the Indianapolis 500 and in Formula 5000 racing.

Brabham won his first championship in 1981 in the ground effect BT49-Ford, and became the first to win a Drivers' Championship with a turbocharged car, in 1983.

In 1983 the Brabham BT52, driven by Piquet and Italian Riccardo Patrese, was powered by the BMW M12 straight-4 engine, and powered Brabham to four of the team's thiry-five Grand Prix victories.

Brabham team was founded by Jack Brabham and Ron Tauranac, who met in 1951 while both were successfully building and racing cars in their native Australia.

Brabham was the more successful driver and went to the United Kingdom in 1955 to further his racing career.

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In 1959 and 1960, Brabham won the Formula One World Drivers' Championship in Cooper's revolutionary mid-engined cars.

Brabham pushed for further advances, and played a significant role in developing Cooper's highly successful 1960 T53 "lowline" car, with input from his friend Tauranac.

Brabham was confident he could do better than Cooper, and in late 1959 he asked Tauranac to come to the UK and work with him, initially producing upgrade kits for Sunbeam Rapier and Triumph Herald road cars at his car dealership, Jack Brabham Motors, but with the long-term aim of designing racing cars.

Brabham describes Tauranac as "absolutely the only bloke I'd have gone into partnership with".

Brabham had a poor season, scoring only four points, and—having run his own private Coopers in non-championship events during 1961—left the company in 1962 to drive for his own team: the Brabham Racing Organisation, using cars built by Motor Racing Developments.

The Brabham Racing Organisation started the year fielding a customer Lotus chassis, which was delivered at 3am to keep it a secret.

Brabham took two points finishes in Lotuses, before the turquoise-liveried Brabham BT3 car made its debut at the 1962 German Grand Prix.

Brabham took the team's first win at the non-championship Solitude Grand Prix in 1963.

Brabham finished third or fourth in the Constructors' Championship for three years running, but poor reliability marred promising performances on several occasions.

Brabham used engines from Australian engineering firm Repco, which had never produced a Formula One engine before, based on aluminium V8 engine blocks from the defunct American Oldsmobile F85 road car project, and other off-the-shelf parts.

At the French Grand Prix at Reims-Gueux, Brabham became the first man to win a Formula One world championship race in a car bearing his own name.

Brabham won his third title in 1966, becoming the only driver to win the Formula One World Championship in a car carrying his own name.

The Brabham team took the Constructors' World Championship in both years.

Brabham himself took a couple of pole positions and two top-3 finishes, but did not finish half the races.

Brabham intended to retire at the end of the 1969 season and sold his share in the team to Tauranac.

Brabham took his last win in the opening race of the 1970 season and was competitive throughout the year, although mechanical failures blunted his challenge.

Brabham sold the company for £100,000 at the end of 1971 to British businessman Bernie Ecclestone, Rindt's former manager and erstwhile owner of the Connaught team.

Brabham had tested a BMW four-cylinder M12 turbocharged engine in the summer of 1981.

Brabham continued to run the Cosworth-powered BT49D in the early part of the season while reliability and driveability issues with the BMW units were resolved.

Brabham finished fifth in 1984 and a mere eighth in 1985 in the respective Drivers' Championships.

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The upright units, around which Brabham had designed their new car, were sold for use by the Arrows team.

Senior figures at Brabham, including Murray, have admitted that by this stage Ecclestone had lost interest in running the team.

The new Brabham BT58, powered by a Judd V8 engine, was produced for the 1989 season.

Brabham cars were widely used by other teams, and not just in Formula One.

Tauranac was responsible for design and running the business, while Brabham was the test driver and arranged corporate deals like the Repco engine supply and the use of the MIRA wind tunnel.

Brabham contributed ideas to the design process and often machined parts and helped build the cars.

Brabham investigated other chassis suppliers for BRO, however the two reached an agreement and from 1966 MRD was much more closely involved in this category.

Brabham had the reputation of providing customers with cars of a standard equal to those used by the works team, which worked "out of the box".

Brabham provided a high degree of support to its customers—including Jack Brabham helping customers set up their cars.

Brabham cars competed at the Indianapolis 500 from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s.

Cars were entered by MRD and not by the Brabham Racing Organisation, avoiding a direct conflict with Repco, their Formula One engine supplier.

Brabham was considered a technically conservative team in the 1960s, chiefly because it persevered with traditional spaceframe cars long after Lotus introduced lighter, stiffer monocoque chassis to Formula One in 1962.

At the 1968 Belgian Grand Prix, Brabham was the first, alongside Ferrari, to introduce full width rear wings to this effect.

Brabham was accused of cheating by other teams, although Murray believes that the system met the letter of the regulations.

At the 1982 British Grand Prix, Brabham reintroduced the idea of re-fuelling and changing the car's tyres during the race, unseen since the 1957 Formula One season, to allow its drivers to sprint away at the start of races on a light fuel load and soft tyres.

Brabham had to design and build a replacement, the BT52, in only three months.

The Brabham family was not involved and announced that it was seeking legal advice over the use of the name.

Brabham expressed interest in returning to Formula One, but did not have the financial capacity to do so.

In 2019, Brabham Automotive announced its goal to enter the 2021 FIA World Endurance Championship using a BT62 in the GTE class.

In 2021, Brabham Automotive debuted their BT63 GT2 car at the season finale of the 2021 GT2 European Series.

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