BRM

Interesting facts

BRM (British Racing Motors) was founded in 1945 by Raymond Mays and Peter Berthon as a national prestige project to put an all-British car at the front of grand prix racing. Its first engine was an extraordinarily complex 1.5-litre supercharged V16 with over 36,000 precision parts - immensely powerful but unreliable and hard to drive; the Type 15 scored its first win at a non-championship Goodwood race in September 1950. When early backers pulled out disappointed with progress, Alfred Owen of Rubery Owen took control, and from 1954 to 1970 the works team officially raced as the Owen Racing Organisation. In 1962 Graham Hill won the Drivers' Championship in the BRM P57, with the team simultaneously claiming the Constructors' title - BRM's only championship year. The notoriously troublesome H16 engine (1966-1968) earned the team the unflattering nickname 'British Racing Misery' among fans. BRM's last Grand Prix win came with Jean-Pierre Beltoise at Monaco in 1972, before the team folded for good in 1977. BRM's Formula 1 history ran from 1958 to 1977, 20 seasons in total as a British team. BRM won the Constructors' Championship once, in 1962. The team scored a total of 385 constructors' championship points.