The factory was established at Spalding Road in Bourne, Lincolnshire, in a building called The Maltings — the former ERA works vacated in 1939 — behind Eastgate House, the family home of Raymond Mays. Several people previously associated with ERA returned to the firm, including Harry Mundy and Eric Richter. The team also used a test facility at Folkingham aerodrome.
BRM's first engine was a 1.5-litre supercharged V16 designed under the post-war Formula One rules that permitted 1.5-litre supercharged or 4.5-litre normally aspirated engines. Rolls-Royce was contracted to produce centrifugal superchargers. The engine first ran in June 1949. It proved outstandingly powerful but its power came on suddenly over a narrow rev range, making the car difficult to drive on the narrow tyres of the era. Engineer Tony Rudd was seconded from Rolls-Royce to develop the supercharging system and stayed with BRM for nearly twenty years.
The V16 car — designated Type 15 — won its first two races at Goodwood in September 1950, driven by Reg Parnell in Formula Libre and Formula One events. Thereafter it was unreliable and the team was unable to resolve the problems before the Commission Sportive Internationale announced in 1952 that a new 2.5-litre naturally aspirated formula would take effect from 1954.
The Type 25 used an oversquare 2.5-litre four-cylinder engine designed by Stewart Tresilian. It arrived late and required extensive development; the Owen Organisation started the 2.5-litre formula using a Maserati 250F while the P25 was readied. Colin Chapman helped improve the car in 1956. Stirling Moss considered the BRM engine superior to the Coventry-Climax unit in his Cooper, and a P25 was briefly campaigned by the British Racing Partnership for Moss and Hans Herrmann in 1959. The P25 did not win a race until the 1959 Dutch Grand Prix. The rear-engined P48 was developed as a rapid response to the rise of Cooper's rear-engined layout, using major components from the P25.
When the 1.5-litre atmospheric Formula One rules arrived in 1961, Alfred Owen threatened to withdraw funding unless race victories were achieved quickly.
By the end of 1961 BRM had completed a V8 engine designed by Peter Berthon and Aubrey Woods. The critical change was the promotion of Tony Rudd to chief development engineer; Rudd was given full executive authority in early 1962 with Mays and Berthon sidelined. Rudd had been with BRM since 1950, originally on secondment from Rolls-Royce. Graham Hill and Dan Gurney had gone on strike in 1960, refusing to drive until Owen increased Rudd's responsibility. With Rudd in full control, longstanding engineering and reliability problems began to disappear. Graham Hill won the 1962 World Drivers' Championship in the P57; BRM also won the Constructors' title that year. The team finished second in the Constructors' competition in 1963, 1964, 1965 and 1971. The V8 engine was sold to privateers, powering private Lotus chassis and smaller constructors including the British Racing Partnership.
For the 1966 three-litre formula, BRM built the H16 (BRM P75), designed by Tony Rudd and Geoff Johnson. The concept joined two flat-eight engines one above the other with the crankshafts geared together. Though powerful, the engine was heavy and unreliable; Rudd said the castings were made much thicker than his drawings specified. When Lotus received their first H16 it took six men to carry it from the van. BRM earned the nickname "British Racing Misery." Lotus used the H16 as an interim solution, building the Lotus 43, and Jim Clark won the 1966 US Grand Prix at Watkins Glen with it — the engine's only World Championship victory.
The H16 was replaced by a V12 designed by Geoff Johnson. It was first used in the McLaren M5A. The V12 first appeared in the 1968 Tasman Championship in 2.5-litre form, with Bruce McLaren winning one round but being generally unimpressed with the car. After a difficult 1968 season that included the death of Mike Spence at Indianapolis (while testing the Lotus 56), the team regrouped. Tony Southgate joined as designer and Pedro Rodríguez returned as lead driver alongside Jack Oliver. Rodríguez won the 1970 Belgian Grand Prix in the P153, BRM's first V12 victory. Jo Siffert and Peter Gethin added wins in 1971 in the P160. Both Siffert and Rodríguez were killed before the 1972 season. Jean-Pierre Beltoise won the rain-affected 1972 Monaco Grand Prix in the P160 — the team's last World Championship victory and also the first win for a Marlboro-sponsored Formula One car.
For 1972 Marlboro became BRM's major sponsor — the first Formula One team sponsored by the brand. Louis Stanley, who had taken over day-to-day management (he was the husband of Sir Alfred's sister Jean Owen), planned to field up to six cars from a mix of paid and paying drivers. The overextension became obvious; sponsors insisted the team cut back and only three cars ran in 1973 for Beltoise, Niki Lauda and Clay Regazzoni. Marlboro transferred its sponsorship to McLaren from 1974 and Yardley, which had sponsored BRM from 1970, had similarly moved to McLaren from 1972.
Beltoise's second place in the 1974 South African Grand Prix with the Mike Pilbeam-designed P201 was the team's last notable result. The Owen Organisation ended its support and the team was run on a reduced basis by Louis Stanley as Stanley-BRM until 1977. After the team folded, cereal producer and amateur racer John Jordan purchased assets and backed construction of P230 cars by CTG for the Aurora AFX Formula One Championship. Teddy Pilette raced a P207 in 1978, finishing fourth at Oulton Park and fifth at Brands Hatch.
The V8 engine powered many cars in the 1.5-litre formula, including private Lotus and Brabham chassis and the BRP works team. Enlarged Tasman-spec V8s of 1.9–2.1 litres were sold as a stopgap in 1966 before full three-litre engines were widely available; units were also sold to Matra for early sports-prototypes. V12s were sold to Cooper, John Wyer and McLaren. Matra entered a collaboration agreement for a V12 engine with BRM but was forced to abandon it publicly when the arrangement threatened its French government funding; the finished Matra V12 retained close similarities to the BRM.
BRM collaborated with Rover on a gas-turbine car that ran at Le Mans in 1963 and 1965 (missing 1964 due to testing damage). BRM was also involved in Donald Campbell's Bluebird-Proteus CN7 project. As part of the Owen Organisation, BRM produced tuned road-car engines for Ford and Chrysler. The BRM-tuned version of the Lotus-Ford Twin Cam engine was sold as the Special Equipment option on the Lotus Elan and formed the basis for the later Elan Sprint engine after Tony Rudd took it to Lotus. BRM was contracted by Chrysler (UK) to develop a sixteen-valve head for the Hillman Avenger engine, which proved unreliable and unable to match the Cosworth BDB-powered Ford Escort RS1600.
Early cars were pale duck-egg green, later changed to a dark metallic grey-green. During the Owen years, cars bore "Owen Racing Organisation" signage. Cars entered by non-British privateer teams wore national racing colours: the Italian Scuderia Centro Sud team ran red; Maurice Trintignant's cars ran French blue. For a period Alfred Owen's brother Ernest pushed for orange — the Rubery Owen corporate colour — with black trim; Tony Rudd deflected the proposal by pointing out orange was the Dutch national racing colour. Through most of the 1960s the cars ran with orange bands around the nose. From 1970 the team ran in Yardley white with black, gold and ochre stripes. The 1972 Marlboro livery was white and red (flat, not dayglo); Stanley-BRM ran red, white and blue; the final incarnation was pale blue and white sponsored by Rotary Watches.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
Gallery · 4 related images
