British Racing Motors

British Racing Motors (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.

History

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.

V 16

A factory was set up in Spalding Road, Bourne, Lincolnshire, behind Eastgate House, Mays' family home, next to the site of the ERA works. 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 superchargers, rather than the more commonly used Rootes postive-displacement 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.

Crisis

The Type 25 was the next car. It used a 2.5L unsupercharged four-cylinder engine. It was also unsuccessful, never winning a race, even in the hands of very talented drivers. 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.

Champions

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. The team designed their first mid-engined car, matching the other teams, and won the World Drivers Championship with Graham Hill as a driver, in 1962.

File:Rntbrm3litergp.jpg

Cover of Road & Track magazine, showing BRM H16 engine.

H 16

For 1966, the engine regulations changed to 3.0 litre unsupercharged (or 1.5 litre supercharged) engines. BRM refused Aubrey Woods' proposal to a build a V 12, 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.

Later, the firm sold engines to other constructors of which the most notable were John Wyer, McLaren and Matra.

Exhibition

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.

External links

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