The name Brabham is famous in the world of Formula One mainly due to the driver and multiple world champion, Sir Jack Brabham, but arguably as famous is the team that Brabham himself founded that raced from 1962 to 1992. During that thirty year period the team entered 399 grand prix, taking 35 wins with 4 drivers championships and 2 constructors championships with drivers such as Brabham, Hulme, Gurney, Ickx and Rindt to name a few. This piece hopes to explore those thirty years of history and delve into the important and stand-out moments from the teams history.

The team began its grand prix venture in in the last four races of the 1962 season, Jack Brabham having left Cooper, the team whom he won his first two championships, to focus on spearheading his own project. In those four races the first Brabham car performed respectively, recording two 4th places and a best qualifying of 3rd in South Africa. It would take until 1964 however for the team to record its first grand prix victory, said victory coming at the French Grand Prix at the hands of, not Brabham but, Dan Gurney. The ’64 car actually showed a decent turn of pace, having secured two pole positions in the first three races, but was let down by the Coventry-Climax engine which proved too unreliable compared to that of the BRM and Ferrari engines. Had the Coventry-Climax engine been reliable then Gurney might well have been in the title battle with Surtees and Hill as he had led more races and more races laps than the two title protagonists.

During the ’65 season, whilst Lotus was revolutionising design with its monocoque chassis, Brabham designer Ron Tauranac persisted with the multi-tubular concept and continued to have relative success with it but overall the 1965 campaign was underwhelming with the team finishing third in the Constructors, 27 points behind champions Lotus, having failed to win a race all year. That disappointment was cast aside however during the 1966 and 1967 seasons when the team took back to back Drivers and Constructors championships. The ’66 season saw Brabham become the first driver to win a race in a car bearing their name and later became the only driver to date to win a championship in such a car. This success was built upon the reliable Repco engine which compared to the competition (Honda= 385 bhp, Ferrari= 360 bhp) wasn’t that powerful (Repco= 285 bhp) but it was that reliability over power that saw Brabham come out on top. A run of four straight wins mid-season for Jack sealing the deal.

The ’67 season was a closer affair. Chased by the boom or bust Lotus 49 of Jim Clark and team-mate Brabham, Denny Hulme would take title honours by 5 points and became the first driver from New Zealand to win the world championship. Lotus once again squandered by the reliable Repco engine. However, during the 1968 season the seemingly bullet-proof Repco engine did a 180 and was beset with dire problems from the start of the season. The engine suffered from chronic value gear problems making its much improved power output of 400 bhp practically useless. After a respectable 1969 season, finishing 2nd in the Constructors, 1970 would be the final season of grand prix racing for team owner Jack. The first race of the year, in South Africa, saw Brabham race their first monocoque chassis which Jack, nicknamed the ‘Old man’, took to victory. It would be his last win in F1.

In 1972 Bernie Ecclestone bought the team which gave hope of a revival and more financial security in a rapidly growing commercial F1 world (tobacco companies spending big for example). In 1974 the financial backing under new leadership seemed to be paying off as Carlos Reutemann took victory in South Africa, the teams first victory since Brabham himself won at the same track in 1970. Reutemann would go on and take a further two victories, in Austria and the season finale in the US. A year later the team returned to a fully competitive state as Reutemann and team-mate Carlos Pace were realistic title contenders for half the year, only being mathematically knocked out late on during the campaign. Both drivers won a race each and the team finished 2nd in the constructors championship, the teams highest finish since 1969. The 1977 season saw a drop in performance, the team not even recording a podium finish, due to the team taking on the new Alfa Romeo engines. Despite this the team was showing promise for the 1978 season as the Alfa engine promised an improvement on top of the team signing the reigning double world champion Niki Lauda after became disillusioned and fell out with Ferrari.

The 1978 season started decently despite only finishing in three of the first six races, the promise of a competitive package kept alive by the fact that those three finishes were all podiums. At the eighth race of the season, in Sweden, Brabham first raced with the famous ‘fan-car’, the teams response to the ground-effect Lotus 78. The car made use of a massive fan at the rear of the car which was linked with the engine. The higher the engine revved, the faster the fan would spin and the greater the suction effect would become and thus more downforce. The car in the hands of Lauda won the race by over half a minute but was banned before the next race as the fan was deemed to be a ‘movable aero device’ which weren’t allowed under the rules. Overall the ’78 car was promising in qualifying but was brittle in the races, lacking the reliability for a season long challenge.The team finished the year with 53 points and third in the Constructors Championship. The 1979 season, however, saw a drop in performance with the team picking up a mere 7 points. The team also lost the services of Lauda at seasons end, saying that he didn’t like the way the new high downforce cars drove and that they were too reliant on said downforce. Although there was a silver lining as it was the first season for a certain Nelson Piquet.

The 1980 season saw a return in form for the team, now lead by Piquet, and despite coming up short in the championship, leading going into the final two rounds but losing by 13 points, there were moments when the Piquet-Brabham relationship looked unbeatable. This serious turn of pace was finally converted in ’81 with Piquet besting former Brabham driver, Reutemann, to the title by a single point. The Brabham seesaw continued into 1982 with another drop in performance but this was partly due to the fact that the team were trialing the new BMW-Turbo engine as turbo technology, no matter how inconsistent, was the future of the F1 engine. The reliable, handy, consistent Ford DFV engine would soon become a thing of the past. The testing of the BMW-Turbo engine paid dividends as the team and Piquet won their second title in three years, this time against the title favorites in Prost and Renault (the team that introduced turbos to F1). Late in the season the Renault reliability started to drop away which wasn’t helped by a few mistakes by Prost. The final four races read: Piquet= RET, 1ST, 1ST, 3RD. Prost= RET, RET, 2ND, RET. Piquet would win the title by just 2 points.

The following season saw another drop in reliability and lowering overall competitiveness, a consequence of pushing the turbo technology. Speed was not an issue as Piquet claimed nine poles throughout the year yet only recorded two victories. After a underwhelming 1985 season, which saw Piquet record only one pole and one victory due to problems with their Pirelli tyres, Piquet left Brabham for Williams. Brabham had to bounce back without their star man, and that rebuild began horribly with new signing Elio de Angelis tragically passing away from smoke inhalation when he was testing the Brabham BT55 at Paul Ricard. The car lost its rear-wing and barrel rolled with de Angelis unable to get out the car once it had come to a stop. The BT55 was the brain child of Gordon Murray and resembled the McLaren MP4-4, a car Murray would design for the 1988 season. The whole car was very low profile which improved the centre of gravity. On top of this the low profile didn’t hinder the amount of downforce generated and didn’t improve the amount of drag being produced. This meant that the car was very quick in a straight line (reaching speed of 214 mph). The radical approach however did see reliability take a hit and with the sluggishness of the BMW-Turbo it wasn’t really competitive, not even reaching the podium. The overall concept needed work which is what McLaren benefited from as the MP4-4 won 15 out of the 16 rounds in ’88. In 1990 David Brabham, son of Jack, became the first son of a world champion to start a grand prix. He did so, fittingly, in a Brabham.

The Hungarian Grand Prix of 1992 would be the teams last with 11th being their last finishing position thanks to Damon Hill. The drop off in performance from 1988 to 1992 culminating in the teams shutdown mid-season was a sad way to see a former giant of the sport fade into obscurity. They scored just 25 points across their last six years of competition.

From the spirited beginnings to over coming hurdles in the mid-70’s and the glory days of Piquet, the Brabham name will forever remain synonymous with Formula One and will always act as an inspiration and a symbol of the ‘can do’ attitude, as it did with the emergence Bruce McLaren and how he started his own team. Its just a shame how the team went out with naught more than a whimper.