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British Racing Motors
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Bourne , Lincolnshire , United Kingdom
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Louis Stanley
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Tony Rudd
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Reg Parnell , Mike Hawthorn , Maurice Trintignant , Jo Bonnier , Dan Gurney , Graham Hill , Jackie Stewart , John Surtees , Niki Lauda
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Unknown
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Several
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BRM 30 Litre V12
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Unknown
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1950 International Trophy race at Silverstone
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1950-1977
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1, 1962
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1, 1962
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17
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Unknown
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Unknown
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1977
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18th (0 points)
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(generally known as '''BRM''') was a
British Formula 1 Motor Racing team. Founded in
1945 , it raced from
1950 to
1977 , competing in 197
Grand Prix and winning 17. In
1962 , BRM won the Constructors' Title. At the same time, its driver,
Graham Hill became World Champion. In
1963 ,
1964 ,
1965 and
1971 , BRM came second in the Constructors' Competition.
BRM was founded just after the
Second World War by
Raymond Mays , who had built several
Hillclimb and
Road Racing cars under the
ERA brand before the war, and
Peter Berthon , a long-time associate. Mays' pre-war successes led to contacts with
Alfred Owen in 1945, with the idea to form a British motor racing team to compete with the Europeans on the Continent. Owen ran the
Rubery Owen group of companies, which primarily manufactured auto parts.
A factory was set up in Spalding Road,
Bourne ,
Lincolnshire , behind Eastgate House, Mays' family home. (At this stage it was in the former ERA works, vacated in
1939 and used in
1944 as a billet for the
Parachute Regiment as it regrouped before going to
Arnhem .) Several people involved with ERA returned to the firm to work for BRM, including
Harry Mundy and
Eric Richter . The first post-war set of rules for the top level of motor racing allowed 1.5 litre supercharged or 4.5 litre unsupercharged engines.
BRM's first engine design was an extremely ambitious
1.5 Litre Supercharged V16 .
Rolls-Royce was contracted to produce
Centrifugal Supercharger s, rather than the more commonly used
Roots Type Supercharger . Since his experience on the supercharging of the ERA engines, Berthon had been doing war-time work on aero-engines at Rolls Royce,
Derby . 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 of
1949 . It proved to be outstandingly powerful but this output was produced over a rather limited range of engine speed.
The Type 15, which was the designation for the V16 car won the first two races it actually started, the
Formula Libre and
Formula One events at
Goodwood in September, 1950, driven by
Reg Parnell . However, it was never to be so successful again. The engine proved unreliable, and the team's development efforts were not up to the task of improving the situation. A string of failures caused much embarrassment, and the problems were still unsolved when the
CSI announced in
1952 that for
1954 , a new engine formula of 2.5 litres unsupercharged or 750cc supercharged would take effect.
The Type 25 was the next car. It used a 2.5L unsupercharged four-cylinder engine and it too was unsuccessful, not winning a race until a long awaited victory at the dutch gp in 1959. The firm moved to a purpose-built workshop on an adjoining site in Spring
1960 but when the 1.5 litre unsupercharged Formula 1 regulation was introduced in
1961 , Alfred Owen was threatening to pull the plug unless race victories were achieved very soon.
BRM managed to build an engine designed by Peter Berthon and
Aubrey Woods (BRM P56 V8) which was on a par with the
Dino V6 used by
Ferrari and the
Coventry-Climax V8 used by other British teams. However, the real change was a junior engineer who had been with the team since 1950;
Tony Rudd was elevated by Owen to the position of chief development engineer. Rudd was the first competent engineer in that role in the team's history, and 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 and Dan 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 first
Mid-engined car for 1960, matching the other teams, and won the World Drivers Championship with
Graham Hill as a driver, in 1962.
For
1966 , the engine regulations changed to 3.0 litre unsupercharged (or 1.5 litre supercharged) engines. BRM refused Aubrey Woods' proposal to build a
V12 , and instead built a strange engine
H 16 (BRM 75), which used two flat-8 engines one above the other, with the crankshafts geared together. This engine was powerful but heavy and unreliable, had low torque and a high centre of gravity. The reason for the choice of this design remains obscure but it is probable that BRM found the H 16 attractive because it shared some parts with the 1.5 litre V8.
Jackie Stewart (who drove for BRM in this period) is believed to have said "This piece of metal is better used as a ship's anchor than as a power plant". At that time BRM earned the nickname of "British Racing Misery". However,
Lotus had been using the BRM 1.5 V8, and along with others, had used the engines stretched to 2.0 litre form for some races during 1966, as competitive 3.0 engines were in short supply in this first year of the new regulations. Lotus took up the H16, building the Lotus 43 to house it, and
Jim Clark managed to win the
US Grand Prix at
Watkins Glen with this combination. It was the only victory for this engine in a World Championship race.
The H 16 was replaced by a V 12 designed by Woods. This engine was first used by
McLaren M5, and gained its first victory for
Pedro Rodriguez at the
Belgian GP in 1970 in a P153, with further victories for Jo Siffert and Peter Gethin in 1971 in the P160. Their last victory was when
Jean Pierre Beltoise won the
1972 Monaco Grand Prix with the P160.
The last notable performance was a second position in the
1974 South African Grand Prix with the P201.
The firm sold engines to other constructors of which the most notable were
Cooper ,
John Wyer ,
McLaren and
Matra .
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, at Bourne Civic Society's Heritage Centre. It is open on weekend and bank holiday afternoons, Christmas excepted.
You can drive a detailed virtual recreation of the BRM H16-powered P115 and the BRM P261 in the pc-based F1-simulation
Grand Prix Legends .
