A superb and rare photo of the Brabham Ford
racer with driver Piers Courage before action of the 1969 Dutch Grand Prix at
Zandvoort Formula 1 race!
Brabham
(officially known as Motor Racing
Developments Ltd.) 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, 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.
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 FIA, the 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 Cooper
were still Brabham's employers, 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. Motor Racing Developments initially concentrated on making
money by building cars for sale to customers in lower formulae, so the new car
for the Formula One team was not ready until partway through the 1962 Formula
One season. The Brabham Racing Organisation (BRO) started the year fielding
customer Lotus chassis, in which Brabham took two points finishes, before the
turquoise-liveried Brabham BT3 car made its debut at the 1962 German Grand
Prix. It retired with a throttle problem after nine of the fifteen laps, but
went on to take a pair of fourth places at the end of the season. From the 1963
season, Brabham was partnered by American driver Dan Gurney, the pair now
running in Australia's
racing colours of green and gold. Jack Brabham took the team's first win at the
non-championship Solitude Grand Prix in 1963. Gurney took the marque's first
two wins in the world championship, at the 1964 French and Mexican Grands Prix.
Brabham works and customer cars took another three non-championship wins during
the 1964 season. The 1965 season was less successful, with no championship
wins. Brabham finished third or fourth in the constructors' championship for
three years running, but poor reliability marred promising performances on
several occasions. Motor sport authors Mike Lawrence and David Hodges have said
that a lack of resources may have cost the team results, a view echoed by Ron
Tauranac. The FIA doubled the Formula One engine capacity limit to 3 litres for the 1966
season and suitable engines were scarce. Brabham used engines from Australian
engineering firm Repco, which had never produced a Formula One engine before,
based on aluminium V8 engine blocks from the defunct American Oldsmobile F85
road car project, and other off the shelf parts. Consulting and design engineer
Phil Irving (of Vincent Motorcycle fame) was the project engineer responsible
for producing an outstanding engine in such a short space of time. However, few
expected the Brabham-Repcos to be competitive, but the light and reliable cars
ran at the front from the start of the season. At the French Grand Prix at
Reims-Gueux, Jack Brabham became the first man to win a Formula One world
championship race in a car bearing his own name. Only his former team mate,
Bruce McLaren, has since matched the achievement. It was the first in a run of
four straight wins for the Australian veteran. Jack Brabham won his third title
in 1966, becoming the only driver (as of 2007) to win the Formula One World
Championship in a car carrying his own name (cf Surtees, Hill and Fittipaldi
Automotive). In 1967, the title went to Brabham's team mate, New Zealander
Denny Hulme. Hulme had better reliability through the year, possibly due to
Jack Brabham's desire to try new parts first. The Brabham team took the constructors'
world championship in both years. For 1968 Austrian Jochen Rindt replaced
Hulme, who had left to join McLaren. Repco produced a more powerful version of
their V8 to maintain competitiveness against Ford's new Cosworth DFV, but it
proved very unreliable. Slow communications between the UK and Australia had
always made identifying and correcting problems very difficult. The car was
fast — Rindt set pole position twice during the season — but Brabham and Rindt
finished only three races between them, and ended the year with only ten
points. Although Brabham bought Cosworth DFV engines for the 1969 season, Rindt
left to join Lotus. His replacement, Jacky Ickx, had a strong second half to
the season, winning in Germany
and Canada,
after Jack Brabham was sidelined by a testing accident. Ickx finished second in
the drivers' championship, with 37 points to Jackie Stewart's 63. Brabham
himself took a couple of pole positions and two top three finishes, but did not
finish half the races. The team were second in the constructors' championship,
aided by second places at Monaco
and Watkins Glen scored by Piers Courage, driving a Brabham for the Frank
Williams Racing Cars privateer squad. Jack Brabham intended to retire at the
end of the 1969 season and sold his share in the team to Tauranac. However,
Rindt's late decision to remain with Lotus meant that Brabham drove for another
year. He took his last win in the opening race of the 1970 season and was
competitive throughout the year, although mechanical failures blunted his
challenge. Aided by number two driver Rolf Stommelen, the team came fourth in
the constructors' championship. Tauranac signed double world champion Graham
Hill and young Australian Tim Schenken to drive for the 1971 season. Tauranac
designed the unusual ‘lobster claw’ BT34, featuring twin radiators mounted
ahead of the front wheels, a single example of which was built for Hill.
Although Hill, no longer a front-runner since his 1969 accident, took his final
Formula One win in the non-championship BRDC International Trophy at
Silverstone, the team scored only seven championship points. Tauranac, an
engineer at heart, started to feel his Formula One budget of around £100,000
was a gamble he could not afford to take on his own and began to look around
for an experienced business partner. He sold the company for £100,000 at the
end of 1971 to British businessman Bernie Ecclestone, Jochen Rindt's former
manager and erstwhile owner of the Connaught
team. Tauranac stayed on to design the cars and run the factory.
This is a very nice and very rare non
period photo that reflects a wonderful era of Brabham automotive history in
a wonderful way. This is your rare
chance to own this photo, therefore it is printed in a nice large format
of ca. 8" x 12" (ca. 20 x 30 cm). It makes it perfectly suitable for framing.
Contact us for more Brabham , Formula One and other automotive photos!
Shipping costs will only be $ 7.00 regardless of how many photos you
buy. For 5 or more photos, shipping is free!
(Note: A. Herl, Inc. does not appear on
photo, for ebay purposes only)
No copyright
expressed or implied. Sold as collectable item only. We are clearing out our
archives that we have gathered from various sources.
All items always sent well
protected in PVC clear files and board backed
envelopes.
We have
photographs that came from professional collections and/or were bought from the
original photographer or press studio! They are all of professional and
excellent quality.
After many decades
of professionally collecting photographs and posters we are clearing out our
archives. They make the perfect gift and are perfectly suited for framing. They
will look gorgeous unframed and will be a true asset nicely framed with a
border. They are a gorgeous and great asset in every home, workshop, workplace,
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