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| Full name | British Racing Motors |
|---|---|
| Base | Bourne,Lincolnshire,England |
| Founder(s) | Raymond Mays Peter Berthon |
| Noted staff | Alfred Owen Louis Stanley Jean Stanley Tony Rudd |
| Noted drivers |  Jo Bonnier Tony BrooksRon Flockhart Dan GurneyMike HawthornGraham Hill Niki LaudaReg Parnell Clay Regazzoni Pedro Rodríguez Harry SchellJo SiffertJackie StewartJohn Surtees Maurice TrintignantJean-Pierre Beltoise |
| Formula One World Championship career | |
| First entry | 1951 British Grand Prix |
| Races entered | 197 |
| Engines | BRM,Climax |
| Constructors' Championships | 1 (1962) |
| Drivers' Championships | 1 (1962) |
| Race victories | 17 |
| Pole positions | 11 |
| Fastest laps | 15 |
| Final entry | 1977 Italian Grand Prix |
| Formula One World Championship career | |
|---|---|
| First entry | 1951 British Grand Prix |
| Last entry | 1977 Italian Grand Prix |
| Races entered | 200 (189 starts) |
| Chassis | BRM,Lotus,Gilby,BRP,Scirocco,Brabham,Matra,McLaren,Cooper |
| Constructors' Championships | 1 (1962) |
| Drivers' Championships | 1 (1962) |
| Race victories | 18 |
| Podiums | 65 |
| Points | 499 |
| Pole positions | 11 |
| Fastest laps | 14 |
British Racing Motors (BRM) was a BritishFormula Onemotor racing team. Founded in 1945 and based in the market town ofBourne inLincolnshire, it participated from 1951 to 1977, competing in 197grands prix and winning seventeen. BRM won the constructors' title in 1962 when its driverGraham Hill became world champion. In 1963, 1964, 1965 and 1971, BRM came second in the constructors' competition.
BRM was founded just after theSecond World War byRaymond Mays, who had built severalhillclimb androad racing cars under theERA brand before the war, andPeter Berthon, a long-time associate. Mays' pre-war successes (and access to pre-warMercedes-Benz andAuto Union design documents) inspired him to build an all-British grand prix car for the post-war era as a national prestige project, with financial and industrial backing from the British motor industry and its suppliers channelled through atrust fund.
This proved to be an unwieldy way of organising and financing the project, and as some of the backers withdrew, disappointed with the team's slow progress and early results, it fell to one of the partners in the trust,Alfred Owen of theRubery Owen group of companies. Owen, whose group primarily manufactured car parts, took over the team in its entirety. Between 1954 and 1970 the team entered its works F1 cars under the official name of theOwen Racing Organisation. Berthon and Mays continued to run the team on Rubery Owen's behalf into the 1960s, before it was handed over toLouis Stanley, the husband of Sir Alfred's sister Jean Owen.
A factory was set up in Spalding Road,Bourne,Lincolnshire, behindEastgate House, Mays' family home, in a building called 'The Maltings' (the adjacent former ERA works, vacated in 1939).[1] Several people involved with ERA returned to the firm to work for BRM, includingHarry Mundy and Eric Richter. The team also had access to a test facility atFolkingham aerodrome.
The first post-war rules for the top level of motor racing allowed 1.5-litre supercharged or 4.5-litre normally aspirated engines. BRM's first engine design was an extremely ambitious1.5-litre supercharged V16.Rolls-Royce was contracted to producecentrifugal superchargers, rather than the more commonly usedRoots type. The design concept of the V16 had not been used extensively on automobiles before so that design problems were many and the engine did not fire for the first time until June 1949. It proved to be outstandingly powerful but its output was produced over a very limited range of engine speed, coming on suddenly if the throttle was applied carelessly, resulting inwheelspin as the narrow tyres proved unable to transfer the power to the road. This made the car very touchy to drive. EngineerTony Rudd was seconded to BRM from Rolls-Royce to develop the supercharging system and remained involved with BRM for nearly twenty years.
TheType 15, which was the designation for the V16 car, won the first two races it actually started, theFormula Libre andFormula One events atGoodwood in September 1950, driven byReg Parnell. However, it was never to be so successful again. The engine proved unreliable and difficult to develop, and the team were not up to the task of improving the situation. A string of failures caused much embarrassment, and the problems were still unsolved when theCommission Sportive Internationale announced in 1952 that for 1954, a new engine formula of 2.5 litres naturally aspirated or 750 cc supercharged would take effect.
Meanwhile, the organisers of all the grands prix counting for the world championship elected to run their races forFormula Two for the next two years, asAlfa Romeo had pulled out of racing and BRM were unable to present raceworthy cars, leaving no credible opposition toFerrari other than outdatedLago-Talbots and the oddO.S.C.A. The V16s continued to race in minor Formula One races and in British Formula Libre events until the mid fifties, battles withTony Vandervell's Thin Wall SpecialFerrari 375 being a particular highlight of the British scene.
TheType 25 was BRM's next car. It used an extremelyoversquare (4.05 x 2.95 in, 102.87 x 74.93 mm) 2.5 L atmospheric four-cylinder engine designed byStewart Tresilian and (as became typical with BRM) it arrived late and took a lot of development; it was so late that the Owen Organisation started the 2.5 L formula with aMaserati 250F. The P25 was initially unsuccessful, not winning a race until a victory at the Dutch Grand Prix in 1959.Colin Chapman helped to improve the car in 1956.Stirling Moss believed that the BRM engine was superior to theCoventry-Climax unit used in hisCooper, and a P25 was briefly run in 1959 by theBritish Racing Partnership, for Moss (and also Hans Herrmann), andRob Walker also backed the construction of a Cooper-BRM to gain access to the engine.
The P25 was becoming highly competitive just as the rear-engined Cooper started to become dominant; theP48 was a quick reaction to this, using major components from the P25 but in rear-engined format. The P48 was revised for the 1.5 L rules in 1961, but once again BRM's own engine was not ready and the cars had to run with a Coventry-Climax four-cylinder unit in adapted P48 chassis, achieving very little in terms of results.
The firm moved to a purpose-built workshop on an adjoining site in the spring of 1960, but when the 1.5-litre atmospheric Formula One regulation was introduced in 1961, Alfred Owen was threatening to pull the plug unless race victories were achieved very soon.
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By the end of the1961 season BRM had managed to build an engine designed by Peter Berthon andAubrey Woods (BRM P56 V8) (2.6975 x 2.0 in, 68.5 x 50.8 mm) which was on a par with theDino V6 used byFerrari and theCoventry Climax V8 used by other British teams. However, the real change was the promotion by Owen of an engineer who had been with the team since 1950 (originally on secondment from Rolls-Royce to look after the supercharging on the V16),Tony Rudd, to the position of chief development engineer. Rudd was the first professional engineer to exercise full technical control over the team, and basic engineering and reliability problems which had plagued the team for years began to vanish. He was given greater responsibility in 1960 after two of the drivers,Graham Hill andDan Gurney, went on strike and told Alfred Owen they would not drive again, and in early 1962 full executive authority was given to Tony Rudd. Raymond Mays and Peter Berthon were sidelined. The team had designed their firstmid-engined car for 1960, matching the other teams, and won the World Drivers' Championship with Graham Hill as driver, in1962 with theP57. (During 1962, BRM also ranLucaselectronic ignition.)[2] During 1965, 210 bhp (160 kW) at 11,000 rpm was the rated power. However at the high-speed 1965 Italian GP (Monza) an uprated version was raced with 220 bhp (160 kW) at 11,750 rpm for short bursts. A planned 4-valve-per-cylinder version in cooperation withWeslake Engineering never materialised.
As part of Owen's attempt to make BRM pay its way, the V8 engine was sold to privateers and appeared in a number of other chassis during the 1.5 L formula, particularly in privateLotus chassis and in smaller marques such asBRP.
A number of privateers acquired 1961 and 1962 BRMs during this period, includingMaurice Trintignant andScuderia Centro Sud; these cars continued to race for many years.
The monocoqueBRM P261 V8 car was soon developed and these ran on through the 1.5-litre formula and performed useful service in the early races of the subsequent 3.0-litre formula. In 1965Jackie Stewart was signed to partner Hill; he took hisfirst grand prix win atMonza in his debut season, and won the first world championship race of the new three-litre formula with a car fitted with aTasman two-litre V8; once again BRM were not ready for the start of a new formula and the old cars continued to be used, even on occasion after the H16 was ready.
For1966, the engine regulations changed to permit three-litre atmospheric (or 1.5-litre supercharged) engines. BRM refused Peter Berthon and Aubrey Woods's proposal to build aV12, and instead built an ingenious but very complicated engine, designed by Tony Rudd and Geoff Johnson, theH16 (BRM P75), which essentially used twoflat-eight engines (derived from their 1.5L V8) one above the other, with the crankshafts geared together.
BRM found the H16 (2.75 x 1.925 in, 69.85 x 48.895 mm) attractive because it was initially planned to share design elements and components with the successful 1.5-litre V8. While the engine was powerful, it was also heavy and unreliable – Rudd claimed that his drawings were not followed accurately and many of the castings were much thicker and heavier than he had specified (when Lotus took delivery of their first H16 it took six men to carry it from the van to the workshop). At that time, BRM earned the nickname of "British Racing Misery". BRM,Lotus, and various privateers had been using enlarged versions of the BRM 1.5 V8 of up to 2.1 litres in 1966, as competitive three-litre engines were in short supply in the first year of the new regulations. Lotus also took up the H16 as an interim measure until theCosworthDFV was ready, building theLotus 43 to house it, andJim Clark managed to win theUS Grand Prix atWatkins Glen with this combination. It was the only victory for this engine in a world championship race. Lotus built the similarLotus 42 designed for Indianapolis with a 4.2-litre version of the H16 (2.9375 x 2.36 in, 74.61 x 59.94 mm) but this was never raceworthy; the cars were raced with Ford V8s instead.
The H16 engine was redesigned with a narrow-angle four-valve head and magnesium main castings to reduce weight and increase power, but was never raced (it was intended for the 1967 BRM P115) as BRM decided to use the V12 unit which was being sold to other F1 and sports car teams with encouraging results.[4][5]
The H16 was replaced by a V12 (2.9375 x 2.25 in, 74.61 x 57.15 mm) designed by Geoff Johnson. It had been intended for sports car use, but was first used in F1 by theMcLaren M5A. Back at the works, the early V12 years were lean ones. In1967 the two-valve layout gave about 360 bhp (270 kW) at 9,000 rpm. In 1968 this had increased to 390 bhp (290 kW) at 9,750 rpm. Geoff Johnson updated the design by adding a four-valve head, based on the H16 485 bhp 4-valve layout; this improved the V12's power output to 452 bhp (337 kW) at 10,500 rpm and eventually to a claimed 465 bhp (347 kW) during 1969. In 1973, Louis Stanley claimed 490 bhp (370 kW) at 11,750 rpm. The design and building of the first V-12 chassis, the P126 was contracted to former Lotus and Eagle designerLen Terry's Transatlantic Automotive Consultants. The cars first appeared during the 1968 Tasman Championship, powered by 2.5 litre versions of the engine, temporary team driver Bruce McLaren winning the fourth round of the series at Teretonga but being generally unimpressed with the car. BRM themselves built further examples of the Terry design, which were designated P133 and 1968 team driversMike Spence andPedro Rodríguez appeared competitive in early season non championship races at Brands Hatch and Silverstone, but then Spence was killed driving the Lotus 56 turbine during qualifying at Indianapolis. Spence's replacement, Richard Attwood, finished a good second to Graham Hill's Lotus at Monaco, but after this results went downhill and the season petered out ignominiously. For 1969 the four valve per cylinder engine was developed and a new slimline car, the P139 was built.John Surtees joined as the team's lead driver backed up by Jack Oliver. Rodríguez was shunted into the semi-worksParnell team. Surtees' time at BRM was not a happy one and, despite the fact that aground effect "wing car" was designed, this was never constructed and the team's performances were lacklustre. Surtees left after a single season (1969), along with Tony Rudd who went to Lotus (initially on the road-car side), and Geoff Johnson who departed for Austin Morris.
The team regrouped withTony Southgate as designer and Rodríguez brought back into the fold to partner Oliver, and gained its first V12 victory when Rodríguez won the1970 Belgian Grand Prix in a P153, with further victories for Jo Siffert and Peter Gethin in 1971 in the P160. The team had reached one of its intermittent peaks of success. Both Siffert and Rodríguez were killed before the 1972 season and the team had to regroup completely again. Their last World Championship victory came whenJean-Pierre Beltoise drove a stunning race to win the rain-affected1972 Monaco Grand Prix with the P160. He also won the non-championship1972 World Championship Victory Race later in the year. The1972 campaign was generally chaotic: having acquired major sponsorship (ofMarlboro cigarettes, being the first team in the category to be sponsored by the brand), Louis Stanley originally planned to field up to six cars (three for established drivers, three for paying journeymen and young drivers) of varying designs including P153s, P160s and P180s and actually ran up to five for a mix of paying and paid drivers until it became obvious that it was completely overstretched and the team's sponsors insisted that the team should cut back to a more reasonable level and only three cars were run in 1973 for Beltoise, Lauda, and Regazzoni. At the end of the year, Marlboro would transfer its sponsorship toMcLaren from1974 (staying with the team until1996).
The last notable performance was Beltoise's second-place finish in the1974 South African Grand Prix with theMike Pilbeam-designed P201, a car with a pyramidalmonocoque, very different from the curvy "Coke-bottle" Southgate cars. The Owen Organisation ended its support of the team and it was run on a lower-key basis by Louis Stanley and some of the Bourne personnel asStanley-BRM until 1977. Old P201s were initially used, with the team hoping for a revival with the bulky P207 – which failed entirely.
Cereal millionaire and amateur racerJohn Jordan purchased some of the team's assets when the team finally folded, and backed the building of a pair of P230 cars by CTG, with the aim of competing in the national-levelAurora AFX Formula One Championship.[6]Teddy Pilette raced a P207 during 1978 with modest success, finishing fourth at Oulton Park and fifth at Brands Hatch. One chassis also apparently raced in the revivedCan-Am series.
The team became involved withRover's gas-turbine project, with theRover-BRMgas turbine car running atLe Mans in1963 and1965; it was damaged in testing and missed the 1964 race. BRM were also involved withDonald Campbell's gas-turbineBluebird-Proteus CN7 project. In later years they also built an unsuccessfulCan-Am car, and dabbled with larger versions of the H16 engine for theIndianapolis 500. As a part of the Owen Organisation, BRM also worked on tuned road-car engines for Ford, Chrysler and others. The BRM-tuned version of the 1557 ccLotus-Ford Twin Cam engine was particularly popular as theSpecial Equipment option on theLotus Elan. This improved version of the Lotus-Ford engine was used by Tony Rudd when he left BRM for Lotus to form the basis of the Lotus produced "Sprint" version of the engine used in theElan Sprint, Elan Plus2S-130,Europa JPS andCaterham Seven.
BRM were contracted by Chrysler (UK) Competition Department to develop a sixteen-valve cylinder head for theHillman Avenger engine. It proved unreliable, underpowered, and unable to compete with the Ford rally team's provenCosworth BDB-poweredRS1600 Escorts.
The Owen Organisation expected BRM to turn a profit through sales of racing engines; the four-cylinder appeared briefly in a Cooper-BRM special forStirling Moss but found no other customers. The V8 powered many 1.5-litre cars, including various private Lotuses and Brabhams as well as theBRP works team. EnlargedTasman Series V8s of between 1.9 and 2.1 L were popular in 1966 as a stopgap before full three-litre engines were widely available. These units were also sold toMatra to power its early sports-prototypes.
A one-litreFormula Two engine was also made available, based on half of the F1 V8. This was not successful, in a formula dominated byCosworth-Ford and eventuallyHonda engines.
Team Lotus used the ill-fated H16 engine, scoring its only win.
V12s were sold to other constructors of which the most notable wereCooper,John Wyer andMcLaren.Matra entered into a contract with BRM to collaborate in the design of their own V12 engine, but when this became public knowledge the French constructor was forced to drop the involvement with BRM and restart development with a French partner, as its government funding was threatened, but there were still close resemblances between the finished Matra engine and the BRM.
The first BRM cars entered by the BRMworks team were a pale duck-egg green (any shade of green represented theBritish racing green, thenational racing colour of Great Britain), but this was later replaced for aesthetic reasons by a very dark metallic shade of grey-green. During the team's Owen-owned years the cars bore simple "Owen Racing Organisation" signage. The BRP-entered BRM forMoss andHerrmann was a non-metallic duck-egg green. However, BRM cars entered by non-Britishprivateer teams wore their respectivenational racing colours, e.g. the ItalianScuderia Centro Sud team ran their cars inItalian red and cars entered byMaurice Trintignant's privateer team were inFrench blue.
At one point in the 1960s Alfred Owen's brother Ernest wanted the team to paint their cars orange with black trim, orange being the Owen Organisation's corporate colour, used for a band around the nose of the cars and for the mechanics' overalls; Rudd (who didn't like the idea of orange BRMs) pointed out that orange was theDutch racing colour, when such things were still honoured; through most of the 1960s the cars ran with Owen orange bands round the nose.
The team acquired significantcommercial sponsorship fromYardley for the1970 season, running in white with black, gold and ochre stripes in a stylised "Y" wrapping around the car's bodywork, losing this deal toMcLaren for the1972 season and replacing it byMarlboro's familiar white and red (a flat shade, notdayglo) colours. The BRM team became the first F1 team sponsored by Marlboro and at the1972 Monaco Grand Prix the team achieved their last win which was also the first win for a Marlboro-sponsored F1 car. Ironically this deal was also lost to McLaren for the1974 season, to be replaced briefly byMotul in a pale green and silver colour scheme. As Stanley-BRM the cars initially ran in red, white and blue with no major sponsorship; for the team's swansong it was sponsored byRotary Watches and ran in pale blue and white. The Jordan-BRM P230 was black and gold.
BRM raced again as part of a project byJohn Mangoletsi for aGroup C sports car known as theP351 with the backing of the Owen family to use the BRM name. Unfortunately the car was short lived and unsuccessful. In 1997Keith Wiggins andPacific Racing would resurrect the car as theBRM P301, using the BRM name only because it was technically a BRM built chassis but had no other connection to British Racing Motors. Heavily modified into an open cockpit sportscar, the car was equally unsuccessful.
A special editionRover 200 was produced to commemorate the Rover-BRM gas-turbine car; this was finished in Brooklands Green (however not the very dark metallic gunmetal BRM shade) with an orange lower, front grill and silver details.
In October 2008, a press release announced that Bee Automobiles Ltd car BRM Bee Four ERV would compete in the British Speed Hill Climb championships:
As of 2011, the car had yet to leave the drawing board.[7][8][9][10]
In 2012, Bobbie Neate, granddaughter of Alfred Ernest Owen (who createdRubery Owen) and daughter of Jean Stanley (née Owen) wrote of her memories of BRM racing in the 1950s and 60s in her bookConspiracy of Secrets.
The BRM team won seventeen Formula One Grands Prix as follows:
There is a small exhibition about Raymond Mays, including his interest in BRM, together with the trophies won by BRM while it was owned by the Owen Organisation, atBourne Civic Society's Heritage Centre.
A driveable, detailed virtual recreation of the BRM H16-powered P83/P115 and the BRM P261 was made available in the PC simulationGrand Prix Legends[11] that is based on the1967 Formula One season. An unlicensed recreation of the 1968BRM P126 can be found inrFactor 2.[12]
In celebration of BRM's 70th anniversary, John Owen, the 81-year-old son of BRM's original owner, the renowned industrialist, Sir Alfred Owen, has commissioned the build of three authentic 'new' 1950s V16 race cars. BRM's technical partners, Hall and Hall, used the original 'engine number two' a V16 power unit dating back to the 1950s, to help engineers overcome the technical challenges presented by one of the most complex Formula 1 engines of its day – each with more than 36,000 precision-engineered parts.
The re-built engine itself was cautiously tested at Hall and Hall's dynamometer at RAF Folkingham, Lincolnshire, where the original BRM Formula 1 engineering team worked during the 1950s. This particular engine has not been run since one of the original BRM team drivers, José Froilán González, then 77 years old, accidentally over-revved it at BRM's 50th anniversary celebration at Silverstone in 1999. It was comprehensively 'lunched', according to Hall and Hall technicians and has remained in storage ever since.
The three 'new' P15 V16 BRMs have been made possible by the discovery of three unused chassis numbers which were originally allocated to the racing programme, but never built due to a change in the Formula 1 technical regulations at the time.
The first car commissioned by John Owen is expected to be delivered and presented in public in 2021.
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| Preceded by | Formula One Constructors' Champion 1962 | Succeeded by |
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