The last Brabham to race in F1, is set to make an appearance at next month’s Adelaide Motorsport Festival next month.
The Brabham BT60B was campaigned during the 1992 season by then-future world champion Damon Hill.
It was not a successful machine as the squad struggled for funding and ultimately closed its doors before the end of the year.
It’s the latest in a number of historic F1 machines set to take to the Adelaide Parklands, made famous by the Australian Grand Prix from 1985 to 1995.
A Brabham BT58 is also set to take to the abridged track, a car once driven by Martin Brundle and Stefano Modena throughout the 1989 season.
It was at the wheel of such a car that Brundle was run into by Aryton Senna in that year’s Adelaide event, the Brazilian turning his race-leading McLaren into a tricycle.
This year’s Adelaide Motorsport Festival is celebrating Brabham, three decades on from the team’s demise and four since Nelson Piquet won its last world championship.
Motor Racing Developments was founded by Jack Brabham and Ron Tauranac in 1961 and commenced building competition cars for a number for formulae, including Formula 1 – the Brabham F1 team was a customer of the factory.
The pair were equal partners in the operation until Tauranac became the sole shareholder in 1969 (as Brabham looked to retire but ultimately carried on racing into 1970).
The Australian design legend, who died in 2020 at the age of 95, sold the operation – race team and constructor – to Bernie Ecclestone who owned it until 1987.
It returned in 1989 only for new owner, Joachim Luthi, to be arrested on tax fraud charges.
The team found its way into the hands of the Middlebridge Group for 1990, though it remained underfunded and ultimately folded following the 1992 Hungarian Grand Prix, a shell of the operation which had won world titles with Jack Brabham and Denny Hulme in 1966 and ’67.
Other F1 cars set to appear at the Adelaide Motorsport Festival include a pair of Ferrari 156/85s as raced during the 1985 season, and a 1988-spec Arrows A10B Megatron.
A host more will also be present, plus a variety of other open-wheelers, Supercars, touring cars, and static displays.
The Festival begins on March 24, with a street party, before the Sprint action in Victoria Park on March 25-26.
Discussion about this post