15-1-69 British Cars With the notable The BRM, fitted with a 16exception of the Fer- cylinder supercharged litre engine, was entered for raris driven by Chris its first race at Silverstone Amon and Derek Bell, almost against the wishes of the BRM team. the grid at Wigram Their apprehension was on Saturday will be justified. As French driver filled with British- Raymond Sommer let in the made racing ears, with clutch in his position at the back of the grid the trans. British-made engines. mission failed and the car this was wheeled away to the pad- Fifteen years ago dock. However, the team would not have been the case. persevered with the 16- It is only in the last 15 years cylinder engine until the end that British cars have come to of the 1955 season when the the fore in motor-racing, but FLA. changed the existing ¡so notable have been the sue- Formula I regulations. cesses of British cars since Even under the new formthen, that to many it seemstula, when the team developed that British cars have always a new 25 litre engine, the car • been the ones to beat. The cars that will race at had a very chequered career and it was not until 1958 that Wigram on Saturday have all, the car really began to show with the exception of the Fer any of the promise that it! ¡raris. come to the top in the was later to fulfil. last decade. Fifteen years ago Lotus, Cooper, Brabham and VANWALL McLaren were names The B.R.M. project had lowers of motor-sport. were unknown to most fol been originally financed by a backers, 1955, a ratish "Conaught, from within the motor induspowered by an Alta engine, try, and it was ope of these had shocked the motor sport- men- the late Tony Vandering world by winning vell-who first put British Syracuse Grand Prix. Shocked cars on the Grand Prix map. was no esaggeration; for in Vandervell, founder of gaining an outright win the wall Products, was bitterly car, driven by Tony Brooks (disappointed by the B.R.M.'s was competing in his consistent lack of success and: Formula I race, he decided to "go it alone." quished a four-car Maserati From development work team and broke the existing carried out towards the end lap record three times. ¡of the previous Formula 1, result certainly on a 4o litre. Ferrari-based shocked the race organisers.i ¡"Thinwall Special," he intro- They ordered a complete ex- duced a brand new Formula 1, amination of the car after the car, called the vanwall. That race to ensure that it com-i 1 was in 1904. plied with existing 2.5 litre It was subject to a great Formula I regulations. ¡deal of modification before it gained its first success. In FIRST BRI 1956 the four-cylinder fuel-i These were still early days injected Vanwall, running on for British Formula i cars. potable cito agast an but almost since the end of the Second World War a international field, including racing driver-engineer named Juan Fangio, at Silverstone Raymond Mays had been in the International Trophy. bursting with the idea of For the 1956 season the car! sported a new chassis debuilding an all-British Formula I car to challenge signed by Colin Chapman, the world. The car was named (later to gain fame as a manuthe BRM and was designed by (facturer in his own right. a team that had previously In 1957 the Vanwall gained designed a • famous pre-war international acclaim with its racing car-the BRA. i success at the British Grand At Th Pris at Aintree driven by Tony Brooks and Stirling Moss, who took it over the line after his own car had drapped out. Later Brooks repeated his Syracuse Formula 1 success by winning with Vanwall at Pescara. Moss continued the winnings ways at the extremely fast italian Grand Prix at Monza. HISTORIC SEASON The 1958 season that followed was a truly historic оде for Britain. Vanwall de velopment reached its climax. The car won six of the 11 Grand Prix events counting towards the World Championship. And Tony Vandervell won the World Championship for Manufacturers. Coopers won the Formula II World Championship, and British drivers gained the first three places in the World Drivers' Championship: The 1959 Season started with a bombshell, however. Because of ill health Vandervell was to retire from racing. Although the team announced that they would be entering a car for selected events, no organised programme of racing was being planned. If nothing else the decision left two of tbe world's finest drivers, Tony Brooks and Stirling Moss,! without cars for the forthcoming season. But already a new namel was beginning to emerge the name that was to be the foundation of Britain's Grand Pris effort over the next few years. Coopers, as well as winning the Formula Il World Championship, gained two major Formula I successes in 1958 -the Argentine and Monaco Grand Pris, when privately entered cars of the Robi Walker team driven by Stirling Moss gained outright victories. The cars were rearengined with Coventry Climax power units over half-a-litre smaller than their competitors. In the next season Coopers e Top gained the world. constructOrs championship using a new 2.5-litre Coventry Climax engine, winning nine out of the 11 Grand Prix events. The success was repeated in 1960 when once again the coveted constructors' award went to Coopers. The years from 1957 to 1960 had been halcyon years for British constructors and enthusiasts, but 1961 was to bring disappointment. The existing Formula I-750 c.c. supercharger, or 2.5 litre unsupercharged - bad been standing since 1954, The new formula proposed by the F.LA-15-litres unsupercharged-met with little support from the successful British manufacturers who, in an attempt to extend the formula, delayed work on the new cars and engines. Although Coventry Climax had an engine available it did not produce sufficient power to match its foreign rivals. It was in 1962 that B.R.N. The successful car was a brand-new design with a V8 engine, the previous season the cars had . used Coventry Climax units while waiting for their own engines. The car lived up to its promise and won four of the ¡year's nine Grand Prit events, ¡ gained three seconds and the Constructors' Championship, land the team driver, Graham Hill—Number 1 for Gold Leaf Team Lotus at Wigram on Sat- Turday—won the drivers' world championship. The eight-cylinder B.R.M. engine powered not only the team cars but privately entered cars as well. The new Coventry Climax engine was used in the Cooper land Lotus cars, and in a car designed by the then former world champion, Jack Brabham. With the exception of the French Grand Prix, British cars won every one of the nine events counting towards the world championship. The 1963 season was the year of the Lotus. Colin Chapman had had a great deal to do with the design of the chassis and suspension of the • successful Vanwall, and bis: early forays into Formula I racing had been with cars! • to the 1957 Vanwalls. bearing a great resemblance The newspapers called them "mini-! ature" Vanwalls. But he followed • the lead set by Coopers and introduced his first rear-engined car in 1959. In 1962 the Lotus cars proved themselves extremely hability to rob B.R.M. of the world championship. By the next season the! cars had found their form,, and after a year . of hard-i fought battles with B.R.M. won seven of the year's 10! Grand Prix events giving Colin Chapman the Constructors* Championship and Jim Clark the drivers' title. A season of surprises would be the best way of summing up the 1964 season. Lotus and B.R.M. spearheaded the attack, but unreliability and bad luck combined with a strong challenge from the Ferrari equupe cost both manufacturers the champion. ship, which went to Ferrari. SUPREMACY The last season of thei , much-maligned 1.5 litre for-i mula, which in spite of its ¡crities had produced close racing, once again proved the supremacy of British cars. Lotus won the World Championship, team driver Jim Clark won the Drivers' Award. The new 3-litre Formula I Icame into being in 1966. In contrast to the 1.5-litre limit, this move was welcomed by the majority of manufacturas : well as the drivers. Australian Jack Brabham, who had won two World Drivers' Championships while with Cooper, won the championship for the third time. He thus became the first man ever to win the Constructors Award driving his own make of car. Brabham had left the Cooper works teams in 1961: to build and race his own! • machines and his Coventry Climax rear engined cars had ¡always been a threat to the ¡larger works teams during 162, 63, "64 and '65. The start of the 66 seaison had brought the almost traditional problem of power ¡units to the British teams. Coventry Climax, who had ; manufactured the engines for ¡Lotus, Cooper and Brabharo, las well as a number of the private entrants, had altpounced their retirement from motor racing. Of the British teams only! B.R.M.—backed by the large. ¡Owen organisation-had the facilities to design and build ¡their own engines. Cooper turned to Maserati for en igines, and Lotus announced that Ford of Britain was to ¡supply the team's engines, but; ¡until the new units became available they would use one tof the old Coventry Climas ‚engines, or one of the H-16 (engines designed and built by B.R.M. REPCO-BRABHAN Brabham announced that he was to use an engine developed by the Australian Repeo concern. At the begining of the sea son only Ferrari, cooper, Brabham and B.R.M. looked like being competitive and of these many people had written of the "simple" Repco engine. But Brabham had the last laugh; his superb driving together with the Kepco engine and the space-frame car was the recipe that won the World Championship for both constructor and builder. The 1967 season was the second year of the 3-litre formula. Lotus had the new' :Ford-Cosworth engine which won the first race for which it was entered, as well as the British G.P. The B.R.M. engine had found the neces sary reliability but its drivers were dogged by persistent ill luck. Coopers, in search of more power, used a new (threevalve-per-cylinder) cylinderhead for their Italian designed engine and at the Br tish G.P: unveiled a new lightweight car.. The winning Brabham team had a more powerful version of the previous year's Repco engine in the same chassis. As all New Zealand followi ers= of motor-sport know, Denis Hulme took the reliable Brabhams to victory in the world championship, be coming the first New Zealander to gain the coveted award. awards again went to Later And last "year although Hulme, now driving for the McLaren team, was in the running until the last! Although the Lotus team had suffered a severe loss through the death of remarkable and universally-admired Jim Clark, his skilled and popular team-mate, . Granam .- HitE brought the team the victory it deserved. BRITISH ENGINES, LIKE THIS FORD 1600 ce. TVA amit, have made a major impact on the racing scene in the last decade