Brabham/Alfa Romeo

Picked up a cracking book yesterday, its Brabham the grand Prix cars, which of course covers the mid 70's period when they used the Alfa flat 12.

Only got as far as the BT45 at the moment, but its interesting to read how good the Alfa engine was in some respects, it made over 500bhp and was fairly flexible. But also how crap alfa were when it came to quality control, apparently the mounting points were slightly different on every engine, along with the exhaust ports. Oh and it also liked to blow all its oil out.

The BT45 also used the radical new Dunlop carbon brakes. Was this the first GP to use them?

Does the book cover the BT30 F2 cars? I used to work for a chap who owned a load of single seaters including a March Formula Atlantic, a Brabham BT30 F2 (FVA engined) and a lola F3000 car fitted with an ex-F1 DFV. The Brabaham was only out once during my time there but it was a thing of beauty.

Its got a couple of entries about the BT30 in the appendix of results. I'll dig the book out this evening and take a look what it says.

Had a closer look at the book now, doesn't really go into any detail on the BT30, its just mentioned in passing when some of the drivers are spoken about.

They get a mention in the appendix for the 1969 German GP as F2 cars were invited to run at the same time as the F1 cars. It was the Nurburgring so there was plenty of space for them.

The full Brabham results were:

J. Ickx F1 BT26/4 Cosworth DFV 1st
P.Courage F1BT26/1 Cosworth DFV Retired: Accident
P. Westbury F2 BT30 Cosworth FVA 5th in F2 classification
R. Attwood F2 BT30 Cosworth FVA 2nd in F2 classification
X. Perrot F2 BT23C Cosworth FVA 6th in F2 classification

The good old days huh, 5 cars of 3 different types from the same manufacturer.

Took a look at some of the old pages and it appears he had many more Brabham's than the BT30 right up to a BT62. His name was Tommy Reid and he raced for an outfit called Irish Racing Cars which was run (I believe) by a chap by the name of Mick Mooney.