The restoration masters at Hall & Hall call this ex-Pedro Rodríguez BRM P133 one of the most original 3 liter Formula 1 cars left. I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt as Hall & Hall have no shortage of remarkable Formula car restorations under their belts. Which means they’ve seen lots of F1 cars at their worst, and in desperate need of restoration. This car, chassis P133-01, on the other hand, retains a good portion of the car as it was when Pedro crossed the finish line in 2nd place at the 1968 Belgian GP at Spa. Or 2nd at the Brands Hatch Race of Champions in March, ’68. Or 3rd at the ’68 Dutch GP at Zandvoort. Or 3rd at the Canadian GP. Or 4th at his home race in Mexico.
And that leaves out entirely the car’s history with Jackie Oliver the following season. There’s no doubt the car has a brilliant history.
Hall & Hall mentions that the current owner bought the car directly from the team to enter in F1 races in 1971. They must mean Robs Lamplough, who entered the car in the ’71 Jochen Rindt trophy at Hockenheim and in Brands Hatch the same year (without much success, I’m afraid).
I’ve always thought that BRM’s 60’s livery as among the most beautiful of all time. The simple orange belt around the nose that is immediately recognizable but subtle. The dealer’s photos show the car both with and without it’s nose and rear wings. Which makes me think it’s still possible to run the car with the setup Pedro preferred in the ’68 season. See the dealer’s detail page for more.
Make yourself comfortable friends. Karl Ludvigsen is about to tell you everything there is to know about the B.R.M. V16.
Everything.
I think all lectures, and Power Point presentations for that matter, should start with 16 screaming cylinders, don’t you?
With a first row start and fastest lap in the race, the 1962 French Grand Prix really should have belonged to Graham Hill. But a minor bump with a privateer and later engine problems forced Graham to finish 10 laps off the pace. This race was made famous, of course, by Gurney’s win in a Porsche — the first Formula 1 win for both. Let’s take a spin around the forests of Normandy with Graham Hill at the wheel of his unlucky BRM, shall we?
Now this is exactly the position you probably don’t want to be in. Then again, by nearly any measure, sitting on the track watching your BRM tumble through the air, throwing wheels, exhaust, and everything else, is probably a damn fortunate position to end up in. Considering.
This is Hans Herrmann, watching his BRM barrel roll through the air at the South end of the 1959 German Grand Prix. This race was run on the steeply banked AVUS track in West Berlin. The track might have been more economical to run in place of the Nurburgring, but is it ever boring. Looking much more like a modern Speedway than a proper Formula 1 track, it’s simply two very long straights with two banked hairpins at either end. It was at the south end that it all went wrong for our friend Hans here; dropping from 4th to 3rd to slow for the turn. Looks like he got a bit too close to the hay bales, and it was all over. This might be one of only a few examples of being safer without the driver’s safety belts. Whew.