The changing priorities that caused an F1 giant's terminal decline

Nelson Piquet failed to qualify for the 1982 Detroit Grand Prix. A week later in Montreal he flashed across the finish line to win for Brabham – and, more significantly, for the first time with BMW’s turbo four-cylinder. That landmark couldn’t have been better timed, amid heightening tensions as one of Formula 1’s greatest team-manufacturer associations threatened to detonate before it had truly hit full boost. Nothing is more evocative of the cool 1980s than Brabham and BMW, mated together within Gordon Murray’s striking blue-and-white Parmalat wonders. But, for all the stylish achievements, this was a tempestuous, flawed partnership that could and should have achieved much more.

Even at its height a year later, when Piquet’s late-season momentum swept him to an irresistible second drivers’ crown, rarely was this a relationship that ran without some degree of angst. How else could it be? Bernie Ecclestone and his creative genius designer were impossible to please. They wanted everything now, as is the F1 way, and were frustrated by reliability that was a long way from bullet-proof. BMW’s directors, fresh to this hair-trigger world, had never experienced anything like it.