Brabham BT62 filmed testing: Update!
Australian testing continues, but the Brabham is heading to Europe very soon as well...
UPDATE: 19/06/18:
Brabham’s Australian testing programme has concluded with a series of laps at The Bend, a motorsport venue near Adelaide. The car will now head to Europe, and specifically to Portimao, to begin it’s calibration to the Northern Hemisphere’s circuits.
Of the testing so far, Brabham’s Director of Engineering and Technology, Paul Birch, said “Our testing in Australia has proven what the BT62 is capable of in terms of performance, pace and handling – and it’s seriously impressive. As the program advances into Europe, we’ll continue to balance and optimise the car’s set-up and configurations for different driving styles, tracks and conditions."
Nothing in the way of new detail then, other than what we can glean from the video of the test released by Brabham. Showing the car lapping in the wet, two things are apparent. One, that it looks fantastic, and two, that it sounds absolutely mega, that 710hp 5.4-litre V8 screaming up to well over 7,000rpm. Hopefully more will become apparent once it reaches European shores, and perhaps there’ll even be a chance for us to have a go ourselves…
(Dafydd Wood)
ORIGINAL STORY, AS REPORTED 25/05/2018:
"In a different league." That's how Brabham describes the BT62. The league it's differentiating itself from? Supercars and track-biased road cars; the fledgling manufacturer says it's better to think of it as an unrestricted GT racer.
If that sounds like wishful thinking, then Brabham Automotive's Director of Technology and Engineering, Paul Birch, made another claim to back it up: "To give you an idea of just how fast it is, we eclipsed the official outright lap record at Phillip Island during testing - a record formerly held by an open-wheeled car. We didn't go out to set a time, and it wasn't officially recorded, but it demonstrates the car's potential."
Now, anything a manufacturer says about lap times must be taken with a sceptical pinch of salt - and anything unverified by an official stopwatch, even more so - but assuming there's at least a kernel of truth in that statement (and given the lap record at Phillip Island is held by a 20-year-old Formula Holden car, there probably is), the BT62 would appear to be shaping up quite nicely.
Certainly, as we covered off a few weeks ago, it has the ingredients (there's a 710hp 5.4-litre V8 under that body; and reportedly over 1,200kg of downforce pinched from the airflow). It would also, from the evidence of the first video, seem to have quite the soundtrack, too. Which is nice.
What else have we learnt? Well, the first deposits have been taken, and production has begun at Brabham Automotive's advanced manufacturing facility in Adelaide. The company remains committed to delivering the first examples to customers later this year. We look forward to seeing the car on a European track. With a video data logger attached.
Take it you dont like other people having fun in which ever way they choose, even if that doesn't fit into one of "your" box's"
Do "You" really have to understand it, even if "you" are clearly not the target market ???
Let's pretend that you won the lottery, were you old enough to play. Would you buy one of these, or go GT racing? I've been GT racing, so I know which one I'd do. I'll say it again. Why would you buy a track-only car that's not only not eligible for any current race series, but also insanely expensive? I have exactly the same opinion about the FXX programme, don't understand that either. But at least there's an actual heritage at work there, not just a badge.
I understand the track-day car thing. Road-registered quick toys for people without the pockets to go racing, and without the means or desire to store and transport a car you can't drive on the roads. But cars that cost as much as (more than one) fully-funded season in GT3 but will only ever be driven at 6/10ths with a load of nannying rules? Might as well buy a road car and enjoy the pose value.
ks. As for the McLaren in comparison the Ultima will be:less stiff
less powerful (or, if as powerful, less driveable or less reliable)
lower downforce
vastly less clever (no active anything, no stability control, no driving modes etc etc)
probably less safe - although with a cage, harnesses and an extinguisher, race cars don't have quite the same need for sophisticated safety engineering as road cars, so the lack of crumple zones and so on won't be a huge issue on the track.
It will be vastly, vastly slower (in racing car terms). But almost certainly more fun to drive for most people. And you could buy one and write it off ten times before you'd reached the price of the McLaren, so if you could afford either, the Ultima would probably be the one you drove harder.
As above, you could also buy a proper GT3 car (or a used GT2) for the price of the Senna and still have money left over to campaign it in something. I don't know what the Porsche Cup costs to do now, but when I left it was about £150k for the car and £250k per season to run it at the sharp end. You could do a lot worse than spend the money on that, IMO.
As mentioned above, a 911 GT race car would be as quicker but the billionaires less knowledgeable chums couldn't tell the difference between it and a £15k 996.
And no, owning a BT62 won't get you chicks, either.
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff