1962 BRM P57

The idea of British Racing Motors (BRM) would be birthed in the final days of World War II. The underlying goal of the project would be to create a national racing team following the same theme as the mighty Silver Arrows from Germany. The team was to be a mighty force in motor racing. However, the team would make nothing but a mighty roar at the start. The invasion wouldn't come until much later, and it would be the P57 that would spearhead the attack.

Raymond Mays had witnessed the might of the Silver Arrows in motor racing, and then, would witness the might of Germany during the darkest days of World War II. It would come to him that a national racing team would be the best way to restore national pride after the long and dark days of World War II. Even though the English were victorious in the end it had been a long war and England was still nursing its many wounds. Therefore, nothing would be better than a racing team more than capable of handling the new threat coming from the former fascist Italy. It was a war of a different nature to Mays and he would convince a number of key people using the same argument.

There would be many similarities between England and its British Racing Motors team. In the days leading up to World War II, to the great embarrassment of England, its Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain would declare 'Peace for our time'. Of course, it would be just months later that England would be under threat of invasion.

However, during England's darkest days of the London Blitz and the Battle of Britain, the island nation called upon and utilized every possible resource to take the fight back to the German Luftwaffe. Despite its desperate situation the English people would exhibit such a persistence in the face of adversity that the moment would actually become their finest hour. and The English had been the victim of too many assaults from the Germans, but it would be in the midst of the nation's darkest hour Persistence in the face of great adversity. It would be that same dogged determination that would take BRM from being a national joke to being World Champions.

BRM aims, while the desire of just about every team, would be incredibly overly ambitious. The car would be entirely new from nose to tail using the latest technologies in an attempt to present England preeminent in racing car manufacturing. However, it would be just two years after its debut that the BRM trust would be taken over by Alfred Owen. And despite all of the promises and great expectations clearly stated by Mays, it wouldn't be until 1959 that BRM would finally earn its first victory.

Much of BRM's problems toward the later-part of the 1950s were not the result of problems with its cars and the equipment. Instead, the team's real problem would be with its management.
Graham Hill had joined the team in 1960 and would join American Dan Gurney and Swedish driver Jo Bonnier. At the time, the team was still using evolutions of the P25 chassis, and then, would switch to the new P48. Hill and Gurney would really come to recognize the problems existing within the team.

In 1960, Tony Rudd would be given more control over the team as he would be elevated to chief development engineer. Having just one person in charge making decisions would cause improvements in reliability to be made. Suddenly, problems that had plagued the team for years were beginning to evaporate. It was clear, the team had too many people making decisions. Therefore, Hill and Gurney would go on strike telling the management they would not drive again until full authority was given to Rudd. Just like that, Raymond Mays and Peter Berthon would be practically silenced within the team.

With the management issues seemingly thwarted, a new life would come to BRM. The team knew that it had developed a V8 engine on par with the Dino V6 and the Coventry Climax V8. Therefore, the team knew it just needed to develop the right car in which to house the engine. What would result would be the P57, and all those years of underachieving and of being an embarrassment would be overcome. Instead, BRM would become the World Championship threat many expected a decade earlier.

While the solution to BRM's problems may have been more along managerial lines, the cars still played a role of their own in BRM's embarrassment. The team's first model, the P15, would be too overly ambitious with its untested and complicated 16-cylinder engine. Following the P15, the P25 would be BRM's next attempt at righting the ship. However, while the car would prove fast in a straight line, it would have some inherent handling and brake problems that would eventually lead to some spectacular accidents. Certainly handling and braking were of great importance if the team had the goal of being as dominant as the mighty old Silver Arrows.

All of the voices present in BRM would make even a simple solution difficult to come by. Therefore, it would be Chapman that would come along in 1958 and suggest a coil spring arrangement to the suspension. This would greatly improve the car but there were still other issues that made the car somewhat blacklisted, even for those desperate to break into Formula One. Of course, the final blow to the maligned P25 would be Cooper's placement of its engines in the middle of the car thereby increasing handling and stability. This was a revolution that could not be ignored and it was one BRM had not birthed. By this point in time it was obvious BRM was no longer on the forefront of grand prix evolution.

BRM needed to change with the times. But instead of starting over, especially since the P25 was simply not working, the management would make the decision to try and stick with the flawed design and just make changes to it to accommodate a mid-placed engine. Thus, the P48 would be born.

There was hardly anything new on the P48. The car would be virtually identical to the P25 in its shape, appearance, even its components. This meant it was just a flawed mid-engine car. This would be funny if it were not true. The P48 would even make use of the very same components that made the P25 scary, including its single disc brake at the rear of the chassis. Thankfully, for those employed by BRM, 1961 would see sweeping rule changes that would all but force the design team to start from a clean sheet of paper.

1961 would also be the year in which Rudd would consolidate more control within the team. It would also be the time when Hill and Gurney protested, thereby earning Rudd even more control over the operations of the team. The rule changes, the managerial changes and all of the other factors meant BRM could head into the season with a brand new idea using components and arrangements that would work.

The problem the team had is that it needed time. All of the internal troubles had put the team in a position with nothing really to build upon. The team, in essence, needed a stop-gap measure. This would bring about the P48/57.

The P48/57 would be quite the departure from the P48. The car would sport a much lower and wider profile chassis. Streamlined in just about every way, the P48/57 would be a small car as it would be powered by a Climax engine that just didn't have the power like that of its principal competition. This would lead to the team finishing 5th in the Constructors' Championship. However, it seemed more than obvious the team was finally heading in the right direction. And with its next model variant, BRM wouldn't just be heading in the right direction; it would be leading the way.

The new regulations regarding engine displacement would cause many teams to scramble and design competitive cars around the smaller 1.5-liter engines the regulations mandated. Many teams would go with engines with many more cylinders. BRM, however, would remain with the Climax 4-cylinder engine, and instead, would design a very small, neat car around it. BRM would stick with the Climax for one important reason. At the time of the 1961 season, Peter Berthon and Aubrey Woods were busy developing BRM's own V8 engine. Therefore, BRM would retain the small Climax engine for the season. However, the P48/57 would be very small and sleek, representative of what was to come. Unfortunately, it would lack the power to be truly competitive in its own right.

Nonetheless, heading into the 1962 season, Rudd and his team knew they finally had a good base from which to build. Now they would just need to marry the two ideas together. They would need to keep the small, neat and sleek design, but also, place inside that tight little package a bigger engine capable of producing more power.

The new car, which would become known as the P57 would start out with a new engine. At the end of the 1961 season, Peter Berthon and Aubrey Woods would go on to design a V8 engine. The new BRM engine would be a V8 and would be capable of producing 200 bhp, which was in the neighborhood of BRM's main competition. One other advantage the new V8 would have is that it would make use of a Lucas fuel-injection system. This would help to simplify the already tight engine compartment right behind the driver's head and back. Combined with its new fuel-injection system, the BRM V8 would serve as the backbone of the new car.

The 90 degree V8 engine was obviously a bit longer than the Climax 4-cylinder that had been used in the P48/57 the season before. Therefore, Rudd and his team would set about designing a car to perfectly balance out the longer engine.

The body, first of all, would not be made from fiberglass but Elektron, which was ultra-light but strong. This bodywork would be placed on a tubular space frame for added strength and forming the overall design of the car's shape.

The car's shape would be similar to that of the P48/57, but it would certainly have its differences. The P48/57 would be something of a wide car, and the P57 would follow along in that pattern. However, the overall profile of the P57 would be much lower. The P57 would also be a bit longer to help lower the profile of the car. The sleek, longer nose would sport a slightly larger oval-shaped radiator opening on the nose. The radiator opening would continue to sport the two vertical vanes inside that had been first seen on evolutions of the P25.

Like most cars of the day, in order to keep the nose with the lowest profile possible, thereby reducing its drag, the radiator resting within the nose of the car would be able to be positioned at different angles to allow the most airflow while still keeping a small radiator inlet to help improve drag reduction. However, over the course of the season the radiator positioning and the design of the inlet opening would change. At places like Monaco, which was a much slower circuit than others, the radiator inlet would be made wide to provide improved cooling.

The P25 had gone through some expansive evolution over its career, but perhaps one of the most important change the car would go through would come with its improved suspension inspired by Colin Chapman. Those same ideas would make their way into the new P57. The front, as well as the rear, would utilize coil-sprung double wishbone suspension with Armstrong dampers. The width of the bodywork would help, to a small degree, by hiding a portion of the coil spring within the bodywork.

One of the most disappointing aspects to the old P25 would be BRM's use of a single disc brake to providing the braking power for the entire rear end of the car. Therefore, it was very clear the car suffered from adequate braking due to the single disc. This arrangement, amazingly, would again be utilized on the P48. However, when Rudd designed the P57 he would provide disc brakes for all four wheels, thereby improving the car's performance just by increasing its braking abilities.

The wider space frame would enable the fuel tanks to neatly hide within the bodywork. The wider bodywork would also surround and place the laid-back driver firmly in the middle of the car. Not only would the driver be surrounded by the bulging bodywork to the side, but the driver would also be encased by a large wrap-around windscreen that would help with improving the airflow around the cockpit opening. Of course, one of the biggest reasons for the large windscreen was the simple fact the car's space frame construction was of such low-profile that the instrument panel and steering wheel, along with most of the driver, would be otherwise exposed. This would truly create some instability and drag around the cockpit opening.

In spite of the wide space frame design of the car, the cockpit would be cramped and small. Besides the large wrap-around windscreen, the driver's view would be dominated by the three-spoke steering wheel and small instrument cluster that would include nothing more than an RPM, water temperature, oil temperature and other engine-related gauges. The steering wheel would be connected to a rack and pinion steering system that would certainly help to provide precise steering input to the light 1050 pound car. Also resting just to the side of the driver's thigh, in easy reach, would be the BRM 5-speed manual gear lever.

The 5-speed manual transmission would be connected to the car's rear wheel drive and its 200 bhp BRM V8 engine. Comprised of an aluminum alloy block and head, the 1.5-liter engine would utilize dual overhead cams and would have two valves per cylinder. The 90 degree engine design would incorporate well with the low profile of the car. Of course the wider angle between the banks of cylinders meant the weight of the engine was lower to the ground thereby helping to keep the car's center of gravity lower to the ground. A lower center of gravity would help the car's stability and would help with the overall handling of the car.

Being that the car was to be normally aspirated the engine needed to be fed large quantities of air to help increase the engine's horsepower. This would be a problem with the driver protruding up out of the car and into the airstream. With the driver dominating the scene blocking the smooth flow of air to the engine a different arrangement would have to be come to by Rudd and his team. This issue would be resolved by taking and making two ducts on either side of the windscreen. These ducts protruding into the airstream would capture some of the passing air and would channel it into the engine trumpets before the ducts blended into the tightly packaged rear end.

All told, Rudd's design would be a potent design. Not only would the car handle better than any previous model, but when the car's light weight was mated to the 200 bhp V8 engine, the team would have one quick car on its hands. Top speed in the car would push 175 mph. It would be just 4.5 seconds between the starting out from rest and touching 60 mph. And, it would take just about 13 seconds for the car to cover a quarter of a mile.

Were it not for the eight exhaust pipes branching out from the sides of the car and protruding vertically in the air, the P57 would be only about a couple of feet tall. Still, even with the fragile exhaust stacks, Rudd and his team had managed to produce a low-profiled projectile aimed toward the top of the World Championship heap.

When the car was completed there certainly had to be a sense within the team that they finally had a winning design. Of course, after Owen's ultimatum of 'win or else', everyone involved certainly hoped they had a winning design on their hands. But, of course, there still had to be some uncertainty as well. That uncertainty would certainly begin to turn into ripples of belief after the very first race of the season.

The first race of 1962, the first race for the P57, would come at Zandvoort. The race was the Dutch Grand Prix. Throughout practice, Graham Hill would be impressive in the new car. It certainly seemed as though the team had a winner on its hands. However, it would be John Surtees driving a Lola-Climax that would take the pole. BRM wouldn't panic though since Hill would start the race from 2nd place on the grid.

However, once the race started, and Surtees retired after just 8 laps, it would turn into Hill's own personal playground. He would go on to take his first ever career Formula One World Championship victory and would do so with a margin of more than twenty-seven seconds over Trevor Taylor and Phil Hill.

The P57 was the real thing. Some twelve years after the team's debut, it was finally one of the strongest contenders for the championship. Immediately after the victory at Zandvoort, the P57 would continue to be fast but four races would pass before BRM would taste victory once again. However, over the final four races of the 1962 season, Graham Hill and the P57 would be nearly unbeatable. Hill would score victories in the German Grand Prix, the Italian Grand Prix and the South African Grand Prix to take the Driver's Championship by 12 points over Jim Clark. BRM would also go on to take the Constructors' Championship as well. Finally, BRM had risen to the top in grand prix racing.

And while the ascent may have seem slow since the team first debuted all the way back in 1950, actually, the team's rise to the top would be fast considering where it was at just two years prior. But, Hill's and Gurney's strike and Owen's ultimatum would light the fire the team sorely needed. The team would get serious about success. And when BRM got serious about success it was capable of producing a magnificent grand prix car like the P57.

The P57 would come to hold a very special place, not only in the history of BRM, but also, in the history of the only man to have ever achieved the Triple Crown of motorsports. Graham Hill hadn't scored a victory in his grand prix career until Zandvoort in 1962. In many ways, the P57 would be responsible for launching Hill's career. Hill had always been considered good, but 1962 would see his rise to being considered one of the best in the series would be meteoric.

The World Championship in 1962 would be a fulfillment. In many ways, the P57 would end up being the vision Mays had in those last days of World War II: a team with a car that would rule the world.

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By Jeremy McMullen