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According to Khabar Khodro,the Brabham BT62 just got a bit more confusing. But that doesn’t mean it’s not bloody marvellous.
You’ll remember the BT62 is a strange sort of car. Conceived as a no-compromise track-only hypercar that’s too extreme for the road, many of the seventy buyers lining up to pay £1million each decided they would actually like to take their 700bhp monster to the shops. So, Brabham decided to offer a £150,000 road-legal-ready package, as an option.
Meanwhile, Brabham wanted to cater to the speed freaks who didn’t find taking their BT62 to a regular track day enough of a thrill. Well, when you’ve got a reputed 1,200kg of downforce to deploy in a car that only weighs around 1,100kg, it’ll tend to bring out the ‘show-off’ in most of us. So, here’s the BT62 that’s here for lap times and nothing else. This is the BT62 you can officially take racing.
It’s called, appropriately, the Brabham BT62 Competition. This green goddess has been delivered to Horsepower Racing in the UK, ready to compete in the 2020 Britcar Endurance Championship. The owner of the car is serial hypercar purchaser Paul Bailey, who won the 2019 Britcar season in a Ferrari 488 Challenge.
Of course, COVID-19 disruption has affected the Britcar season like it has every motorsport category. The Donington Park and Silverstone events have already been postponed, though it’s hoped the championship can be kickstarted on 27 June at Snetterton, before heading off to Brands Hatch and back to Silverstone.
The spec of the BT62 Competition remains as mouth-watering as the, er, ‘standard’ version. The engine’s a 5.4-litre, naturally-aspirated V8 driving the rear wheels through a six-speed pneumatically-actuated sequential gearbox. It’s got built-in air jacks, a 125-litre long-range fuel cell, and carbon brakes from Brembo that don’t even wake up and bite until they’re cooking at a toasty 450 degrees Celsius.
Anyone else wishing that it’s allowed to go racing like this, without sponsors and stickers all over the place? We need more green’n’gold in motorsport.
