Karl Bird and Eleanor MaslinEast Yorkshire and Lincolnshire
Topical Press Agency/Getty ImagesAs this season’s Formula 1 World Championship reaches a dramatic climax, some of the sport’s most famous figures have been looking back at the humble origins of Britain’s first team. BRM was founded at the bottom of a garden in the small town of Bourne, Lincolnshire, 80 years ago and went on to win the world title.
“It’s an amazing story isn’t it?” says Damon Hill, the former F1 champion and broadcaster. “They set out to take on the world.
“I think they put this country on the map as a world leader in automotive technology and Formula 1.”
Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty ImagesHill, the 1996 world champion, has a strong link to BRM. His father, Graham, drove for the team and won the team’s only title in 1962.
“It was one of the places that really enabled him to show what he had,” Hill recalls. “He built his career on, basically, the success he had at BRM.”
But that success did not come easily.
BRM – or British Racing Motors, as it was formally known – was founded by Raymond Mays, an ambitious racer and entrepreneur, in 1945 in the market town of Bourne.
Mays and co-founder Peter Berthon built a small factory at the bottom of Mays’ garden and set out to take on European teams such as Ferrari and Alfa Romeo.
Anthony Delaine-Smith, who runs a bus company based in Spalding Road, where the former BRM factory once stood, said: “Raymond Mays always had a hankering to go Grand Prix racing.
“The idea was after the war, they would bring industries together with this idea of building a British Grand Prix car.”
At the time motor racing was recovering after World War Two and in 1950 a new Formula 1 World Championship was launched.
BRM developed the Type 15 Chassis Number 1 car, with a V16 supercharged engine, to take part.
Mays brought together about 40 British companies for the project.
He managed to get the backing of some of the UK’s leading industrialists, including Sir Alfred Owen who would go on to buy the team from Mays.
Today, BRM describes the Type 15 as “arguably Britain’s most important Formula 1 car”.
Although it was not ready for the first Formula 1 World Championship race, at Silverstone in 1950, the green BRM was soon racing alongside iconic marques such as Ferrari and Maserati.
In 1952, the company was given another boost when Juan Manuel Fangio, the leading driver of his era, agreed to drive the car.
Maurice Hamilton, the former racing correspondent for BBC Radio 5 Live and The Observer, said: “To get Juan Manuel Fangio into your car was quite something.
“He really was the man, the up-and-coming man.”
National Motor Museum/Heritage Images/Getty ImageMotor racing legend Sir Jackie Stewart, who won three world titles, got his first introduction to F1 while racing with BRM.
He said the team was the “first to undertake huge responsibility” with “top-line drivers”.
“Juan Manuel Fangio drove once at BRM and he was the greatest racing driver that’s ever lived. So I saw all of that,” said Stewart, who joined the team in 1965.
“Really, it was a very important part of my life to get the ride with BRM. That was a very big moment in my life.
“The family – first class. And the engineers and the rest of the people were really wonderful.”
Mark Sutton – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty ImagesHe said the success of BRM paved the way for Britain’s huge motor racing industry, which is now worth £12bn a year according to F1.
“BRM started it all in a big way and we are now the capital of the world,” Stewart added.
BRM raced until 1974, winning 17 grands prix, securing 63 podium finishes and claiming the drivers’ and constructors’ championships in 1962.
Mays put the company up for sale in 1952 and it was bought by Sir Alfred Owen and his engineering company Rubery Owen, though Mays stayed on as team manager.
He went on to be appointed CBE for services to motor racing in 1978, two years before his death at the age of 80.
Nick Owen, the grandson of Sir Alfred, is the custodian of the BRM name today, along with brother Paul, cousin Simon and uncle John.
He described Bourne as the place “where everything happened” from car and engine designs, to tests at nearby Folkingham, which became “critical to the BRM history”.
The team’s success paved the way for British teams such as McLaren, Williams and Lotus.
Nick Owen said as well as celebrating the team’s achievements of the past, BRM wanted to inspire the next generation and “lay the foundations for the future, for the next 75 years”.
