British Racing Motors

Did You Know?

• A small exhibition about Raymond Mays, including his interest in BRM and the trophies won by BRM while owned by the Owen Organisation, is at Bourne Civic Society's Heritage Centre.
• A driveable virtual recreation of the BRM H16‑powered P83/P115 and the BRM P261 is available in the PC simulation Grand Prix Legends, based on the 1967 Formula One season.
• An unlicensed recreation of the 1968 BRM P126 can be found in rFactor 2.

History

BRM was established shortly after the Second World War by Raymond Mays and Peter Berthon. Mays, who had built hillclimb and road racing cars under the ERA brand before the war, drew on his pre‑war successes and access to Mercedes‑Benz and Auto Union design documents to create an all‑British grand prix car as a national prestige project. Financial and industrial backing came from the British motor industry and its suppliers through a trust fund. This arrangement proved unwieldy, and as some backers withdrew, Alfred Owen of the Rubery Owen group took over the team entirely.

Between 1954 and 1970 the works F1 cars entered under the Owen Racing Organisation name. Mays and Berthon continued to run the team on Rubery Owen’s behalf into the 1960s, after which Louis Stanley, husband of Sir Alfred’s sister Jean Owen, took over. A factory was set up in Spalding Road, Bourne, behind Eastgate House, in a building called The Maltings. Several former ERA employees, including Harry Mundy and Eric Richter, returned to work for BRM.

The team also used a test facility at Folkingham aerodrome. The first post‑war rules allowed 1.5‑litre supercharged or 4.5‑litre normally aspirated engines. BRM’s first engine was an ambitious 1.5‑litre supercharged V16, with Rolls‑Royce contracted to produce centrifugal superchargers. The engine did not fire until June 1949; it was powerful but its output came over a narrow rev range, making the car difficult to drive.

Engineer Tony Rudd was seconded from Rolls‑Royce to develop the supercharging system and stayed with BRM for nearly twenty years.

BRM engine sales

The Owen Organisation expected BRM to profit from selling racing engines. The four‑cylinder appeared briefly in a Cooper‑BRM special for Stirling Moss but found no other customers. The V8 powered many 1.5‑litre cars, including private Lotuses and Brabhams as well as the BRP works team. Enlarged Tasman Series V8s of 1.9 to 2.1 litres were popular in 1966 as a stopgap before three‑litre engines became widely available; these units were also sold to Matra for its early sports‑prototypes. A one‑litre Formula Two engine based on half the F1 V8 was unsuccessful. Team Lotus used the H16 engine, scoring its only win. V12s were sold to Cooper, John Wyer and McLaren. Matra contracted to collaborate on a V12 with BRM but was forced to drop the involvement when the arrangement became public, though the finished Matra engine closely resembled the BRM design.

Sponsorship and colours

The works BRM team originally painted its cars a pale duck-egg green, a shade of British racing green, but later switched to a very dark metallic grey-green for looks. During the Owen family’s ownership, the cars simply displayed “Owen Racing Organisation” signage. The BRP team entered non-metallic duck-egg green BRMs for Moss and Herrmann. Privateer teams from outside Britain used their own national colors: Scuderia Centro Sud ran Italian red, and Maurice Trintignant’s squad used French blue.

In the 1960s, Alfred Owen’s brother Ernest wanted orange cars with black trim, the Owen Organisation’s corporate color. Tony Rudd objected because orange was the Dutch racing color, so the cars instead wore orange bands around the nose for most of the decade. Yardley sponsorship brought white paint with black, gold, and ochre stripes in a Y pattern, but that deal moved to McLaren. Marlboro then backed BRM in white and red, making BRM the first Formula One team with Marlboro sponsorship.

At the 1972 Monaco Grand Prix, BRM scored its last win, also the first win for a Marlboro-sponsored F1 car. That deal also went to McLaren, replaced briefly by Motul in pale green and silver. As Stanley-BRM, the cars ran red, white, and blue without major sponsorship. For its final season, Rotary Watches sponsored pale blue and white cars.

The Jordan-BRM P230 was black and gold. Later, John Mangoletsi’s Group C project, the P351, used the BRM name with Owen family backing but was short-lived and unsuccessful. In 1997, Keith Wiggins and Pacific Racing revived the car as the BRM P301, using the name only because the chassis was originally BRM-built; it was equally unsuccessful.

Reawakening

For BRM’s 70th anniversary, John Owen, the 81‑year‑old son of Sir Alfred Owen, commissioned the build of three authentic new 1950s V16 race cars. Technical partners Hall and Hall used the original engine number two, a V16 power unit from the 1950s, to overcome the challenges of one of the most complex Formula 1 engines of its day, each with more than 36,000 precision‑engineered parts. The rebuilt engine was tested at Hall and Hall’s dynamometer at RAF Folkingham, where the original BRM team worked during the 1950s.

That engine had not run since driver José Froilán González accidentally over‑revved it at BRM’s 50th anniversary celebration at Silverstone in 1999, comprehensively damaging it. The three new P15 V16 BRMs were made possible by the discovery of three unused chassis numbers originally allocated but never built due to a change in Formula 1 technical regulations. The first car is expected to be delivered and presented in public in 2021.