How BRM's design dead-ends spurred an F1 champion to go it alone
The 1969 season was not a vintage one for the 1962 constructors' world champions as it mustered just seven points. STUART CODLING recalls its struggles that contributed to a short marriage with John Surtees, and killed off a pioneering ground-effect project
“We are out to get the 1969 Formula 1 world championship. We want to extract more power from our V12 engine and to achieve our success this year. In 1962 I challenged BRM to the effect that if they didn’t win the championship, we should drop it altogether. I have not made quite the same challenge this year but the same feeling exists…”
With this peculiar mixture of clarity and equivocation Sir Alfred Owen outlined his aspirations for the coming season. The venue for the BRM launch, Shell Mex House, an imposing riverside art deco edifice boasting the largest clock face in Britain, was suitably prominent for an occasion high on patriotic bombast. BRM had always seen itself as the British Ferrari but its trophy cupboard attested to a history more dense with competitive troughs than peaks. Many present thought Sir Alfred, the wealthy industrialist whose group of companies had underwritten BRM since 1952, was only fooling himself. Indeed, Shell sponsored the ‘real’ Ferrari, not BRM.
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