Brabham BT19 - Concept

Concept

The BT19 was created by Australian designer Ron Tauranac for the Brabham Racing Organisation (BRO) to use in the 1965 season of the Formula One motor racing World Championship. The BT19, and its contemporary the Lotus 39, were built to use the new FWMW flat-16 engine from Coventry Climax. Only one example of the BT19 design was built, and it never raced in its original form. Climax abandoned the FWMW's development before the end of 1965, their existing FWMV V8 engines proving powerful enough to propel Jim Clark's Lotus 33 to seven wins and the drivers' championship. For 1966, the engine capacity limit in Formula One was doubled from 1.5 litres (92 cu in) to 3 litres (183 cu in). It was not feasible to enlarge existing 1.5-litre engines to take full advantage of the higher limit and Climax chose not to develop a new 3-litre motor, leaving many teams without a viable engine for 1966.

The new 3-litre engines under development by other suppliers all had at least 12 cylinders. All other things being equal, more cylinders allow smaller and lighter moving parts, higher rotational speeds and thus greater peak power. However, more cylinders also mean more moving parts; these can result in greater overall engine weight and reduced reliability. Jack Brabham, owner and lead driver of BRO, took a different approach to the problem of obtaining a suitable engine. He persuaded Australian company Repco to develop a new 3-litre eight-cylinder engine for him, largely based on available components; Brabham and Repco were aware that the engine would not compete in terms of outright power, but felt that a lightweight, reliable engine could achieve good championship results while other teams were still making their new designs reliable.

Brabham cars were designed and built by Motor Racing Developments Ltd. (MRD), which was jointly owned by Tauranac and Jack Brabham and built cars for customers in several racing series. The Formula One racing team, BRO, was a separate company wholly owned by Jack Brabham. It bought its cars from MRD but Tauranac had little connection with the race team between 1962 and 1965. At the end of the 1965 season Tauranac was losing interest in this arrangement, reasoning that "it was just a matter of a lot of effort for no real interest because I didn't get to go racing very much" and "I might as well get on with my main line business, which was selling production cars." Although Brabham investigated using chassis from other manufacturers, the two men eventually agreed that Tauranac would have a greater interest in the Formula One team, which MRD eventually took over completely from BRO. This agreement was not reached until November 1965. Repco delivered the first example of the new engine to the team's headquarters in the United Kingdom in late 1965, just weeks before the first Formula One race to the new regulations, the non-championship South African Grand Prix on 1 January 1966. Rather than build a new car in the limited time available, BRO pressed chassis number F1-1-1965, the sole and unused BT19, into service.