BERNIE THE HISTORY OF BRABHAM TAKES PART 3: 1971-81 OVER

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Bernie Ecclestone claims Ron Tauranac advised him to sack a young Gordon Murray and keep the rest when he took over Brabham – but instead he (Bernie) chose to do the opposite. It’s an exaggeration, but the quip at least reflects Bernie’s ‘my-way’ approach as he swept a new broom through Jack Brabham’s New Haw factory in the early 1970s.

Murray reckons Tauranac hired him on a misunderstanding when the South African engineering graduate walked in off the street. Born in Durban in 1946, racing-obsessed Murray travelled to England in December 1969 without a clear plan of how to land a break. Lotus knocked him back, but when he turned up at Brabham by fluke there were design office vacancies. Tauranac might have thought Gordon had formally applied for one of the posts and took him on, perhaps on the basis of the only obvious thing they had in common: like the veteran Aussie, new-age Murray had started out back home building his own ‘special’, a Lotus 7-type racer that he campaigned in South Africa in the mid-1960s.

By the end of 1971, Murray was ready to leave Brabham – only to think again as bright spark Ecclestone offered fresh promise. It had been a tough season, in stark contrast to Jack Brabham’s final Indian Summer of 1970. Tauranac had signed Graham Hill to replace his old partner, but the double champion was way past his best. Sure, Hill scored a final F1 win at Silverstone’s non-championship International Trophy in the ‘lobster claw’