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Motor Racing Developments Ltd., commonly known as Brabham , was a British racing car manufacturer and Formula One racing team. Founded in 1960 by two Australians, driver Jack Brabham and designer Ron Tauranac, the team won four Drivers' and two Constructors' World Championships in its 30-year Formula One history. Jack Brabham's 1966 Drivers' Championship remains the only such achievement using a car bearing the driver's own name. In the 1960s, Brabham was the world's largest manufacturer of open wheel racing cars for sale to customer teams, and had built more than 500 cars by 1970. During this period, teams using Brabham cars won championships in Formula Two and Formula Three. Brabham cars also competed in the Indianapolis 500 and in Formula 5000 racing. In the 1970s and 1980s, Brabham introduced innovations such as the Gordon Murray designed "fan car"—which won its only race before being withdrawn—in-race refuelling, carbon brakes, and hydropneumatic suspension. The team won two more Formula One Drivers' Championships in the 1980s with Brazilian Nelson Piquet. He won his first championship in in the Ground effects BT49-Ford, and became the first to win a Drivers' Championship with a turbocharged car in . In 1983 the Brabham BT52, driven by Piquet and Italian Riccardo Patrese, was powered by the BMW M12 Straight-4 engine, and powered Brabham to four of the team's 35 Grand Prix victories. British businessman Bernie Ecclestone owned Brabham during most of the 1970s and 1980s, and later became responsible for administering the commercial aspects of Formula One. Ecclestone sold the team in 1988. Its last owner was the Middlebridge Group, a Japanese engineering firm. Midway through the 1992 season, the team collapsed financially as Middlebridge was unable to make repayments against loans provided by Landhurst Leasing. The case was investigated by the United Kingdom Serious Fraud Office. In 2009, an unsuccessful attempt was made by a German organisation to enter the 2010 Formula One season using the Brabham name. ==Origins== The Brabham team was founded by Jack Brabham and Ron Tauranac, who met in 1951 while both were successfully building and racing cars in their native Australia. Brabham was the more successful driver and went to the United Kingdom in 1955 to further his racing career. There he started driving for the Cooper Car Company works team and by 1958 had progressed with them to Formula One, the highest category of open wheel racing defined by the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), motor sport's world governing body.〔"FIA" has been used throughout this article to refer to the motor sports governing body. Until 1978 motor sport was governed directly by the Commission Sportive Internationale (CSI) and from 1978 by the Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile (FISA), both subsidiary bodies of the FIA. In 1992 the FIA subsumed FISA and its governing role.〕 In 1959 and 1960, Brabham won the Formula One World Drivers' Championship in Cooper's revolutionary mid-engined cars.〔Henry (1985) pp. 17–19〕 Despite their innovation of putting the engine behind the driver, the Coopers and their Chief Designer Owen Maddock were generally resistant to developing their cars. Brabham pushed for further advances, and played a significant role in developing Cooper's highly successful 1960 T53 "lowline" car, with input from his friend Tauranac.〔Lawrence (1999) pp. 18, 22. Brabham had consulted Tauranac by letter on technical matters since arriving in the UK. He used a gear cluster designed by Tauranac for several years and Tauranac also advised on the suspension geometry of the Cooper T53 "lowline" car.〕 Brabham was confident he could do better than Cooper, and in late 1959 he asked Tauranac to come to the UK and work with him, initially producing upgrade kits for Sunbeam Rapier and Triumph Herald road cars at his car dealership, Jack Brabham Motors, but with the long-term aim of designing racing cars.〔Lawrence (1999) p. 22–4. Jack had already tried to buy Cooper in association with fellow-driver Roy Salvadori〕 Brabham describes Tauranac as "absolutely the only bloke I'd have gone into partnership with".〔Brabham, Nye (2004) p. 140〕 To meet that aim, Brabham and Tauranac set up Motor Racing Developments Ltd. (MRD), deliberately avoiding the use of either man's name. The new company would compete with Cooper in the market for customer racing cars; as Brabham was still employed by Cooper, Tauranac produced the first MRD car, for the entry level Formula Junior class, in secrecy. Unveiled in the summer of 1961, the "MRD" was soon renamed. Motoring journalist Jabby Crombac pointed out that "() way a Frenchman pronounces those initials—written phonetically, 'em air day'—sounded perilously like the French word... ''merde.''"〔Scarlett (May 2006) p. 43. Although compare pronunciation with the related verb emmerder. This is the story as recalled by both Ron Tauranac and Brabham mechanic Michael Scarlett. The British journalist Alan Brinton has also been credited with pointing out this unfortunate fact to Brabham. See Drackett (1985) p. 21.〕 The cars were subsequently known as Brabhams, with type numbers starting with BT for "Brabham Tauranac".〔Drackett (1985) p. 21. The first prototype FJunior car therefore became the BT1 and its production version the BT2.〕 By the 1961 Formula One season, the Lotus and Ferrari teams had developed the mid-engined approach further than Cooper. Brabham had a poor season, scoring only four points, and—having run his own private Coopers in non-championship events during 1961—left the company in 1962 to drive for his own team: the Brabham Racing Organisation, using cars built by Motor Racing Developments.〔Lawrence (1999) p. 31〕〔Brabham, Nye (2004) pp. 14, 145–9. Brabham's and Tauranac's (Lawrence 1999 p. 32) accounts differ on whether the BRO was formed for the purpose of F1, or was already in existence.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Brabham」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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