Photo: Paren Raval
David Brabham, triple Le Mans winner and son of three-time Formula One World Champion Sir Jack Brabham, has announced that the family name is poised to be seen back on the race track when the Brabham BT62 is entered into the FIA World Endurance Championship for the 2021/22 season with the objective of winning at Le Mans.
David Brabham, speaking at Autosport International, explained how the objective is the result of a multi-year plan, which began with a seven-year legal battle to win back the rights to the Brabham name.
“We’ve been quietly working in the background until May 2018 when we launched which took everyone by surprise – you don’t keep those stories quiet but we managed it,” said Brabham. “The vision started about three years ago in terms of the project. My partners are based in Adelaide, Australia; a private equity group that have different businesses in advanced manufacturing in particular and they were looking for a halo project within the group. It made sense, with a contact of ours, to say ‘You need to meet with us because we’ve got a brand and we need to find the right partners that have got the right finance, the right expertise and the right vision to under-pin what we’re doing’.”
David Brabham told Autosport International that the company has the goal of producing 70 cars, with the intention of developing a customer programme.
“It’s been an incredible journey for us as a group,” continued David Brabham. “We’ve got a factory next to the old Holden factory down in North Adelaide and what’s been very clever in the way the business has been structured is that we don’ have massive overheads. We’ve got a very lean, mean machine down there and we’ve got access to the group’s resources and that’s important for making sure that people feel comfortable and that we’ve got something solid behind us.”
David Brabham is under no illusion as to the size of the challenge ahead.
“Brabham’s DNA is in racing – we’ve had such incredible success. We’ve won championships as a brand so where is the next step for us? We want to take the Brabham BT62 to the road, and we want to go racing – we’ve just announced where we’re headed. There’s a lot of work to do and a big challenge in front of us but it’s an exciting journey at the same time.”
“At the end of the day, starting up a business like this, and a race team in the future and racing at World Championship level, there’s a lot of work to be done for sure but we’ve got a really talented group of people behind us and we’ve got a goal and we’ll go for it.”
