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This article first appeared in GP Racing magazine.
Change was on the cards in the Brabham world in 1970, though visitors to the launch of the BT33 - not a champagne gala but a here-it-is-mate unveiling in the Byfleet factory - would have been hard-pushed to spot much beyond engineering details and the new car's colours, as blue came in for green alongside the familiar yellow stripe. It was not widely known at the time that Jack Brabham had sold his shares in the company to his business partner and chief designer Ron Tauranac.
And why should it be? Neither man was known for their eagerness to engage in idle banter. As Tauranac 'posed' for pictures in the cockpit of the BT33, his first monocoque Formula 1 car, his expression was not that of a man freshly in charge of his own destiny but one thinking "Do I have to?"
In fact, the BT33 was not exactly new. The first chassis had been occupying a corner of the workshop since the preceding summer. 1969 had been tough on a company which had recently won two F1 world championships and enjoyed the profits of selling high-class machinery in the junior formulae: its dominance in F1 evaporated in 1968 along with the Repco V8 engine's reliability in quad-cam form.
