Brabham

Did You Know?

• Jack Brabham had been a highly successful dirt oval speedway Speedcar driver with multiple Australian national and state titles before moving to road racing in 1953.
• The fan car and hydropneumatic suspension exploited loopholes in the sporting regulations.
• In 2009, a German organisation unsuccessfully attempted to enter the 2010 Formula One season using the Brabham name; the Brabham family later obtained legal recognition of their exclusive rights to the brand.

Racing history—Formula One

Motor Racing Developments initially focused on building cars for sale in lower formulae, delaying the Formula One team's own car until the 1962 season was underway. The Brabham Racing Organisation started that year with a customer Lotus chassis, delivered at 3am to maintain secrecy. Jack Brabham earned two points finishes in Lotuses before the turquoise Brabham BT3 appeared at the 1962 German Grand Prix, where it retired after nine laps due to a throttle problem but later secured two fourth-place results.

From 1963, Brabham was joined by American Dan Gurney, and the team raced in Australia's green and gold. Brabham claimed the team's first win at the non-championship Solitude Grand Prix in 1963. Gurney delivered the marque's first two world championship victories at the 1964 French and Mexican Grands Prix. The 1965 season brought no championship wins, and the team placed third or fourth in the Constructors' Championship for three straight years, with reliability issues undermining strong performances.

Motor Racing Developments

Motor Racing Developments, or MRD, was the company founded in 1961 by Jack Brabham and Ron Tauranac to build formula racing cars for sale to other teams. The two men were equal partners from the start. Tauranac looked after the design work and the day-to-day running of the business, while Brabham acted as the test driver, secured key corporate partnerships such as the Repco engine deal and access to the MIRA wind tunnel, contributed design suggestions, and often handled machining and assembly tasks.

Between 1963 and 1965, MRD did not run its own Formula One team; instead, that was handled by a separate entity called the Brabham Racing Organisation (BRO), which bought its cars from MRD like any other customer. BRO paid £3,000 per car but did not cover the cost of development parts. Tauranac grew frustrated with being kept at arm’s length from the Formula One side, and before the 1966 season he indicated he might stop producing Formula One cars under that model.

Brabham looked into other chassis suppliers, but the two men worked out a new arrangement, and from 1966 onward MRD became far more involved in Formula One.

Racing history—other categories

Brabham’s Indianapolis 500 involvement spanned the mid-1960s to early 1970s. After a failed 1962 attempt, MRD was asked in 1964 to create an IndyCar chassis powered by an Offenhauser engine. Jack Brabham drove the resulting BT12, called the “Zink-Urschel Trackburner,” at the 1964 race but dropped out due to a fuel tank issue. The same car returned in 1966, finishing third with Jim McElreath.

Between 1968 and 1970, Brabham came back to Indianapolis, first using a 4.2-liter Repco V8—Peter Revson placed fifth with it in 1969—then switching back to the Offenhauser for 1970. In 1971, J.C. Agajanian entered a Brabham-Offenhauser car, and Bill Vukovich II took fifth. Though no Brabham ever won the 500, McElreath claimed four USAC victories in the BT12 during 1965 and 1966. Mario Andretti’s 1965 USAC championship-winning “Dean Van Lines Special” was a direct copy of that car, built with Brabham’s permission.

Revson scored Brabham’s last USAC win in a BT25 with the Repco engine in 1969. In Formula Two, the 1966 BT18 used a Honda engine as a stressed part and won 11 straight races, driven by Brabham and Hulme. For Formula Three, the BT9 managed only four major wins in 1964, but the 1965 BT15 sold 58 units and won 42 major races. The 1972 BT38C, Brabham’s first production monocoque and first not designed by Tauranac, had 40 orders but proved less successful.

Technical innovation

In the 1960s, Brabham was seen as a technically cautious team because it stuck with traditional spaceframe construction long after Lotus switched to lighter, stiffer monocoque chassis in 1962. Chief designer Tauranac argued that contemporary monocoques weren't meaningfully stiffer than a well-made spaceframe, and that they were tougher to fix and less practical for MRD's customers. Those "old-fashioned" cars won the team championships in 1966 and 1967, and stayed competitive until regulation changes pushed them to monocoques in 1970.

Yet for all that apparent conservatism, Brabham was the first Formula One team to use a wind tunnel in 1963, refining designs to cut drag and stop the cars from lifting off at speed. That practice didn't become standard until the early 1980s and is now a cornerstone of modern car design. At the 1968 Belgian Grand Prix, Brabham and Ferrari were the first to add full-width rear wings to generate aerodynamic downforce. The team's most innovative era came in the 1970s and 1980s under technical director Gordon Murray.

In 1976, Brabham introduced carbon-carbon brakes to Formula One, but the early versions were unreliable; Carlos Pace crashed at 180 mph at the Österreichring when heat buildup boiled the brake fluid, leaving him unable to stop. By 1979, Brabham had a working carbon-carbon braking system with structural carbon discs and carbon pads. The 1978 Brabham BT46B "Fan car" used a fan to suck air from under the car, creating huge downforce, though it was officially for engine cooling.

It raced only once in the World Championship, with Niki Lauda winning the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix, before the FIA closed the loophole.