Brabham

From Classic Car Life

Motor Racing Developments Ltd., commonly known as Brabham (pronounced /ˈbræbəm/), was a British racing car manufacturer and Formula One racing team. Founded in 1960 by two Australians, driver Jack Brabham and designer Ron Tauranac, the team won four drivers' and two constructors' world championships in its 30-year Formula One history. As of 2009[update], Jack Brabham's 1966 drivers' championship remains the only victory by a car bearing the driver's own name.

Brabham was the world's largest manufacturer of customer open wheel racing cars in the 1960s, and had built more than 500 cars by 1970. During this period, teams using Brabham cars won championships in Formula Two and Formula Three and competed in the Indianapolis 500. In the 1970s and 1980s, Brabham introduced innovations such as the controversial but successful 'fan car', in-race refuelling, carbon brakes, and hydropneumatic suspension. The team won two more Formula One drivers' championships in the 1980s with Brazilian Nelson Piquet, and became the first to win a drivers' championship with a turbocharged car.

British businessman Bernie Ecclestone owned Brabham during most of the 1970s and 1980s, and later became responsible for administrating the commercial aspects of Formula One. Ecclestone sold the team in 1988. Its last owner was the Middlebridge Group, a Japanese engineering firm. Midway through the 1992 season, the team collapsed financially as Middlebridge was unable to make repayments against loans provided by Landhurst Leasing. The case was investigated by the UK Serious Fraud Office. In 2009 an unsuccessful attempt was made by a German organisation to enter the 2010 Formula One season using the Brabham name.

Origins

The 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. There he started driving for the Cooper Car Company works team and by 1958 had progressed with them to Formula One, the highest category of open wheel racing defined by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), motor sport's world governing body. In 1959 and 1960 Brabham won the Formula One world drivers' championship driving Cooper's revolutionary mid-engined cars.

Despite their lead in putting the engine behind the driver, the Coopers and their Chief Designer Owen Maddock were resistant to developing their 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 sure 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". To meet that aim, Brabham and Tauranac set up Motor Racing Developments Ltd. (MRD), deliberately avoiding the use of either man’s name. The new company would compete with Cooper in the market for customer racing cars; as Brabham was still employed by Cooper, Tauranac produced the first MRD car, for the entry level Formula Junior class, in secrecy. Unveiled in the summer of 1961, the 'MRD' was soon renamed. Motoring journalist Jabby Crombac pointed out that "[the] way a Frenchman pronounces those initials—written phonetically, 'em air day'—sounded perilously like the French word... merde." The cars were subsequently known as Brabhams, with type numbers starting with BT for 'Brabham Tauranac'.

By the 1961 Formula One season, the Lotus and Ferrari teams had developed the mid-engined approach further than Cooper, where Brabham had a poor season, scoring only four points. Having run his own private Coopers in non-championship events during 1961, Brabham left the company in 1962 to drive for his own team: the Brabham Racing Organisation, using cars built by Motor Racing Developments.

Credit for this page must go to the excellent Wikipedia, the original page, can be found here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brabham