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The 1970-71 BRM P153/P160 are two of my favourite Grand Prix cars, designer Tony Southgate at his best. Jackie Oliver is using every inch of Snetterton in this first test (?) of Bourne’s new P153.

It’s chassis P153/01 on January 1, 1970. This car had rather a short life sadly, it was burned to a crisp after Oliver had front stub-axle failure on the first lap of the Spanish Grand Prix on April 19. Ollie ploughed into the innocent Jacky Ickx’ Ferrari 312B – 312B/01 in fact – the ensuing massive conflagration and incompetence of the marshalls ensured both cars were destroyed.

The P153/P160 were race winning cars too. Pedro Rodriguez was victorious in a P153 in the 1970 Belgian Grand Prix after an epic dice with Chris Amon’s March 701 Ford. He also won the Oulton Park Spring Cup in 1971 aboard a P160. P160 championship victories went to Jo Siffert and Peter Gethin at the Osterreichring and Monza in 1971, while Gethin also won the non-championship Brands Hatch Victory Race that October. In 1972 Jean-Pierre Beltoise took his only GP win at Monaco in soggy conditions in a P160B.

The P153 in its early traditional, pre-Yardley, BRM green with orangey-red trim looked superb! We have Southgate to thank for the new colour too. “The F1 BRMs had been painted a dark, dull, metallic green I thought looked terrible. I called it British Racing Mud…I persuaded the team to change to a more lively green and I ended up with a colour used by Vauxhall Motors, which looked great.

After the phenomenal speed and results of the simple, light 1.5-litre P261 V8 Grand Prix car from 1963-65, BRM had been in the doldrums since 1966-67 with the phenomenal lack of speed of its complex, heavy P83 H-16.

While the 1968-69 P101 and P142 V12 powered P126/133/138/139 had shown occasional flashes of speed, to an extent Bourne had lost its way in both chassis and engine competitiveness. See here: https://primotipo.com/2018/01/25/richard-attwood-brm-p126-longford-1968/

Much respected, long-time engineering chief Tony Rudd – the architect of BRM’s late 1950s-early 1960s rise and rise – left Bourne for Hethel where he became Group Lotus’ Director of Engineering in mid-1969 and was replaced by Tony Southgate who had been drawing and building winning Eagles for Dan Gurney in California.

When 29 year old Tony Southgate arrived at BRM in June 1969 his boss was the self-styled, polarising, ‘Lord’ Louis Stanley. The leadership team comprised Southgate, in charge of chassis design and development, Aubrey Woods of engine development with Alex Stokes as the gearbox specialist.

“My brief was to improve the existing P139 for the remainder of the 1969 season, if possible, and then to deliver an all-new car for 1970,” he wrote in his great ‘Tony Southgate : From Drawing Board to Chequered Flag’.

Southgate decided Alec Osborn’s (who departed BRM along with Peter Wright when Southgate arrived) P139 wasn’t worth spending time on as “Some of the suspension systems and mountings deflected, which produced very spooky handling…Surtees withdrew from the German Grand Prix on the Nurburgring after two of the three practice periods; he was convinced that something was going to break on the car…”

As many of you will recall, John Surtees was having something of an annus horribilis that year, driving shit-heaps on ‘both sides of the Atlantic’: the BRMs and Jim Hall’s Chaparral 2H Chev in North America.

Design and construction…

Tony Southgate wrote that “The philosophy behind the P153 design was maintaining my obsession with low CG, with the fuel concentrated in the centre of the car to achieve minimal interference with the weight distribution as the fuel level changed. Coupled with this was very good torsional stiffness between the wheel centres, and great rigidity of the suspension and its mountings.”

“Aerodynamic testing in 1969 was still basic by modern standards…The full-size race car ran in the MIRA wind tunnel, and the scale model work was done in the Campbell tunnel at Imperial College, London.”

“One of the cars interesting points of note was that it ran on 13-inch diameter wheels both front and rear, when the opposition were using 15-inch at the rear. The car ran on very fat Dunlop tyres (their last year in F1), giving it a very low, squat appearance.”

“The monocoque was unusual in that it had a very pronounced double-curvature shape, being 4 feet wide at the centre. The panels were hand rolled in-house and have a very ‘pregnant’ look to the car.”

Front suspension was period typical: magnesium uprights, upper and lower wishbones with Koni shocks and coil springs and an adjustable roll-bar.

“The V12 engine, as originally designed by Geoff Johnson, was unstressed, but we modified it to make it semi-stressed. A small, neat triangular framework was added to the rear of the monocoque to take part of the load. The engine was very light for a V12. It weighed the same as a Cosworth DFV and had more or less the same maximum horsepower, approximately 427bhp, but less torque. We used 11,200rpm whereas at that time the DFV was limited to around 9300rpm.”

Doug Nye adds further detail about the 1970 engine developments of the 48-valve BRM P142 engine in his ‘History of the Grand Prix Car 1966-85’.

“In 1970, the P142s powered more adequate Southgate designed chassis and began winning races, but power was not destined to improve dramatically in the years left to BRM and its V12 engines. After Rudd had gone to Lotus, Aubrey Woods took over engine development.”

“Woods considered the chain-driven four-cam centre exhaust P142 overheated both its water and oil too easily, and suffered badly from detonation. Its relatively long stroke was a limiting factor, new pistons were required and they took along time to make. He designed new cylinder heads lowering engine CoG with outside exhausts and in’ve inlets with improved ports and enlarged cooling waterways. The crankcase was now cross-bolted and stiffened to allow use as a semi-stressed chassis member.”

“The BRMs would always retain their camshaft chain-drive as the systems last refuge in Formula 1.”

Southgate, “The (Project 131) gearbox for the P153 was the existing one carried over, but with a new outer casing and rear cover castings carrying the complete rear suspension, the rear wing and oil tank assembly. The P153 had np problem getting down to the minimum weight requirement…”

Racing the P153 in 1970…

“The car was immediately quick, but somewhat fragile. Our new number-one driver, Pedro Rodriguez, did a great job and became an instant star within the team. He was amazingly easy to work with, simply a natural, but not a technical driver like John Surtees.”

Frustrated with the lack of progress, and already building Surtees F5000 cars, Big John left to build and race his own F1 cars and to expand his range of customer cars. Jackie Oliver replaced him.

“I had some problems with the P153 in the beginning. A rear axle broke during Kyalami testing…then a similar problem at the front caused a famous fiery accident…” that destroyed both Oliver’s P153 and Jacky Ickx’ Ferrari 312B at Jarama, Spain.

“Reliability was the main problem of 1970. The engine oil system was being particularly difficult. I tried ‘trick’ oil tanks, and by the time we got to the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, the oil-tank had grown to 4.5 gallons in capacity and was fed by 1.25 inch bore Aeroquip pipes (these were hardly hoses)! Miraculously, this did the job for a while. Pedro won the race after leading most of the way, closely caused by Chris Amon’s March 701 Ford. BRM was back…”

“But engine problems still dogged BRM throughput the year, although Pedro gained a second place in the US GP at Watkins Glen and a couple of fourths in other races, and he also won the non-championship Gold Cup at Oulton Park.”

Pedro was leading at Watkins Glen until a splash-and-dash pitstop for fuel, Doug Nye wrote. Fuel consumption had slipped from about 4.8mpg to 6mpg at St Jovite, the BRMs were forced to make pitstops in both Canada and the US as a consequence.

Southgate, “My thoughts on the engine problem were simple: the main bearings were all too small, too narrow. However, this was one of the main reasons the engine was so short. There was no chance of any major design changes in this area, so we had to do with lots of detail design improvements including even better oil tank systems.”

To Southgate’s point, look at the truly massive oil tanks under the BRM’s rear wing in the Mont Tremblant, Canada pitlane below; a few RPM were lost in aero-drag in that lot! Some of the fuel consumption problem is right there…

In 1970 BRM finished 16 times from a total of 37 starts and placed sixth in the World Constructors Championship with Rodriguez seventh in the driver’s and Oliver a disappointing twentieth after retirements in 10 of the 13 rounds!

Nye, “Southgate produced the finest 3-litre BRM in 1971: the definitive chisel-nosed P160, a cleaner, lower, lighter development of the P153, though actually incorporating few interchangeable parts.” A story for another time folks…

Etcetera…

A pair of compare and contrast shots: George Eaton, 1970 BRM P153 at Monaco in May 1970 above, and John Surtees, 1969 BRM P139 during the British GP meeting at Silverstone that July.

The photographer in the Surtees shot looks suspiciously like Rob Walker, he has wandered away from his car, Jo Siffert’s Lotus 49B Ford.

Note the flatter, wider aerodynamic form of the P153, partially informed by the wind tunnel, and earlier P138.

The front suspension of Southgate’s car comprises simpler outboard wishbones, the earlier car uses more complex to make, and more aerodynamic, top rocker and lower wishbone layout. Rear suspension is the same albeit the more advanced two-lower links on the P138 were replaced by Southgate with lower inverted wishbones.

The engine fitted to the P153 is 1970 spec P142 inlet between the vee and side exhaust, that to the P139 is a 1969 spec P142 centre-exhaust V12.

Louis Stanley, Jean Stanley nee-Owen, Raymond Mays, Sir Alfred Owen and Tony Rudd with a BRM P83 at Bourne, allegedly in 1969.

I say allegedly as by 1969 the H16 hadn’t been raced since late 1967, and it makes sense for the PR shot to be with the latest model, not the problem-child. The H-16’s solitary GP win was powering Jim Clark’s Lotus 43 at Watkins Glen in 1966.

In the best tradition of nepotism, Stanley’s power and position arises from his marriage to Jean Stanley, Alfred Owen’s sister.

John Surtees tells it like it is to his boss, Sir Alfred Owen at Silverstone during the July 19, 1969 British GP meeting. Owen was a great industrialist and corporate leader, respected by all who came within his orbit. The AP-Lockheed lady is all over what’s going on, the rest are doing their best to look the other way…

Surtees qualified his BRM P139 sixth, and Oliver his P133 13th, Surtees was out with a suspension problem after completing one lap and Oliver on lap 20 when his transmission failed.

By that weekend Southgate was already onboard. He discloses in his autobiography that the approach for him to join BRM was made by Surtees in the US, John being delegated the task given his regular travel between the UK and US.

Lovely portrait of Tony Southgate (born May 25, 1940) at Silverstone during the July 1971 British GP weekend.

The funniest part of Southgate’s BRM chapters involves his first month at Bourne and running-the-gauntlet from the ageing (August 1, 1899-January 6, 1980) but still very frisky ‘Gay Ray’ Mays!

By that stage – the English Racing Automobiles and British Racing Motors founder – “RM had no particular job at BRM but he was still very much on the scene as a sort of ambassador.” As a handsome young bloke, Southgate was potential Mays’ fresh-meat despite the fact he was married.

Suffice it to say – and do re-read the chapter, in fact the whole fantastic book – after Tony declined to return RM’s car-keys to him to his bedroom, having borrowed said vehicle to visit the team mechanics across town earlier in the evening. Mays then refocussed his energies back on the hotel bell-boys for which he was somewhat infamous…

This fantastic shot of the BRM design team is diminished only because the caption cites four names rather than the requisite five!

Alec Stokes, Aubrey Woods, Alec Osborn and Geoff Johnson in 1959, who is missing folks? The drawing office was then located in the old maltings building behind Raymond Mays’ house.

P153 launch at Silverstone, the car has grown a Dunlop decal since Snetterton in early January. Date folks?

From the left, back row – Dunlop employee Ken Spencer, Alec Stokes, Dave Mason, Len Reedman, Alan Challis, Tim Parnell, Gerry Van-Der-Weyden, Aubrey Woods, then two Shell employees, Willie Southcott, Dunlop employee. Centre Jackie Oliver and Pedro Rodriguez. Front, Jean and Louis Stanley.

Tony Rudd with BRM P83 at Bourne on May 17, 1966.

I suspect there are a couple of generations of BRM fans like me who feel we almost know Tony Rudd thanks to the all-embracing manner in which he worked with Doug Nye to produce the magnificent ‘Saga of British Racing Motors’ Volumes 1-3, with Vol 4 in-the-pot at present.

There are so many documents and corporate reports contained within written by him that you can form an impression of the way he thought, operated and communicated as part of the team. There nothing to suggest he was anything other than someone to know, like, trust and respect…

He was clearly determined, and stubborn too…Doug Nye wrote that “the ultimate, much modified, magnesium block four-valve-per-cylinder H16 engine (yes 64 valves, 128 valve springs – imagine assembling it all) was completed and tested for 1968 but the policy decision was taken to set it aside and concentrate on the simpler, lighter V12.”

Despite that, “The engine continued in test as late as from 13 December 1968 to 25 January 1969. It was number ‘7541’ and the best of its eight runs peaked at only 378bhp at 10,300rpm; that was nothing like enough to compete with Cosworth’s DFV, which was already beyond 430bhp.”

It seems the catalyst, or straw that broke the camels back in terms of Rudd’s departure from BRM was pursuing the H16 for too long, contravening the policy direction of a year or so before. Southgate wrote that “Tony Rudd…hadn’t done what had been ordered, which was to drop the team’s H16 engine programme and proceed with the V12 only.”

Clearly pink was in! Southgate, Alec Stokes, Stanley and Aubrey Woods perhaps at the time the Yardley deal was done. Bourne.

Every man and his poodle raced a BRM P153…

The long-lived machines, in P153, P153/P160B spec, were raced by a swag of drivers, many of them F1 virgins. The roll-call includes Rodriguez, Siffert, Oliver, George Eaton, Howden Ganley, Reine Wisell, Helmut Marko, Alex Soler-Roig, Vern Schuppan, Peter Westbury (DNQ US GP 1970) John Miles and John Cannon. Quite a list, in part due to Stanley’s crazy Marlboro-multiple-entry 1972 season and renta-ride availability.

Allen Brown’s chassis by chassis record of the seven P153s built from late 1969 to early 1971 is here: https://www.oldracingcars.com/brm/p153/ The shot below shows three BRM P153 pilots at Brands Hatch in early 1971: John Miles, Howden Ganley, and Jo Siffert in the car.

Credits…

‘Tony Southgate : From Drawing Board to Chequered Flag’ Tony Southgate, ‘History of The Grand Prix Car 1966-85’ Doug Nye, MotorSport Images, Rainer Schlegelmilch, Getty Images, GP Library, BRM Association Archive

Tailpiece…

Superb MotorSport Images shot of Pedro Rodriguez blasting through Eau Rouge on his way to that hard-fought Belgian Grand Prix, P153 3-litre V12 win.

Any win at daunting Spa was pretty special, and Pedro had a few there, but that one must have been the sweetest of all given fabulous Chris Amon pushed him very hard all the way. It was the last Grand Prix held on the old circuit too…

Finito…