2020 Brabham BT62 first drive: Track day hero

The Brabham BT62 is a track-only toy for those with a lot of money and even more skill.

For David Brabham, the genesis of his new Brabham BT62 track car began around 13 years ago, three years before he won Le Mans with Peugeot in 2009. ‘I knew I was getting too old to race and I had this great name with so much history. I wanted to do something with it,’ explains the 53-year-old, who also has F1 and ALMS on his Curriculum Vitae.

Unfortunately, someone else was using the Brabham name, which had been given its gravitas by three-time Formula One champion and team owner Jack Brabham – aka David’s dad – who passed in 2014. The Australian’s eponymous F1 team had scored 35 victories since its inception in 1961, before being sold and eventually collapsing in 1992. David endured a lengthy legal battle to win back the name.

Six years on, I’m about to drive the Brabham BT62 at Rockingham Race Circuit, England.

An Australian-built $1.3M (plus taxes) track-only rival to the McLaren Senna GTR, the BT62’s spec is as tantalizing as the low-slung looks. It starts with a high-tensile chromoly steel spaceframe chassis clothed in full carbon fiber bodywork. The engine is based on a Ford 5.2-liter Voodoo V8, but it’s been taken out to 5.4 liters and features such heavily revised internals that Brabham calls it its own.

Mid-mounted, dry-sumped and hooked up to a Hollinger six-speed sequential gearbox, the V8 drives the rear wheels alone. Suspending the BT62 is push-rod actuation all-round, with Ohlins dampers. The Brembo brakes feature carbon for both discs and pads.

If the BT62’s 700 hp and 492 lb-ft sound merely competitive these days, they’re exceptional given the lack of forced induction; the 2,143-pound dry weight and over 2,646 pounds of downforce are exceptional full stop. A Senna GTR combines its 814 bhp and 590 lb-ft with a 2,619 pound dry weight and downforce somewhere north of 2,200 pounds.

The fluids are warmed, removable front and rear bodywork reattached, and the BT62 is off its air jacks and sitting on slicks. Think ‘nicely appointed racecar’ for the interior, not ‘stripped road car.’ You step over a large chunk of carbon bodywork and duck under the 47-in high roofline that’s lowered a little further by a neatly integrated rollcage. The seats are laid right back – your backside is low, legs straight ahead, elbows bent to hold the steering wheel just below your eyeline – and they’re upholstered in leather and surprisingly deeply padded too. There’s a racecar-style digital display and an oblong steering wheel with, among other buttons, dials to control the level of stability control and ABS assistance.

The engine is thunderous and loud even in the cabin, but it’s not the oppressive, harsh nightmare you might expect. The clutch is meaty, but you can lift it delicately and the BT62 will creep down the pitlane without even a tickle of throttle. Electrically assisted steering underlines these user-friendly first impressions, being instantly accurate and with meaningful loading the moment you tease it off-center, but its lightness lends the Brabham an approachable, nimble feel. The brake pedal is altogether different: solid, not hugely communicative, but it still imbues confidence when you stand on it.

The V8 is defined by bristling, if far from edgy, throttle response, a spine-tingling roar that makes the Senna seem ordinary, and a linearity and drivability from low revs with none of the spikes of torque a turbo car might throw up.

After a cautious few corners on Rockingham’s infield (it’s circled by a bowl designed for races that never took off here), I progressively flatten the throttle, and rev the V8 out until the shift lights blink in a furious but hugely appealing torrent of V8 blare, rampant speed and transmission whine. Then I click the paddleshifter and – blam! – it’s like an aluminum baseball bat connecting perfectly with the ball – instant, mechanical and fierce, the intensity of acceleration seeming to simply repeat gear after gear.

The Brabham is definitely a serious kind of race car, but it’s notable how progressively it eases its driver in – there are no scary moments as I build up to speed, I’m just gradually educated that I could have pushed harder.

Much of this is in the inherent balance of the chassis….things like the suspension’s composure when you really stand on the astonishing brakes and how effortlessly the front of the BT62 swivels at the apex in low-speed corners. It combines this lightness and delicacy with unflinching grip – both when you give the front tires what feels like too much entry speed, and when you ease into the vast reserves of power on the way out. The BT62 just soaks it all up, gripping hard, going where you point it.

The delicacy translates to quicker steady-state corners too, with compliant damping that lets you load up the BT62 without the springs oscillating and the steering kicking back unpleasantly as sometimes happens with very firm set-ups. The BT62 sits happily, calmly even, through high-g-force sweepers, which encourages you to rely more on the mechanical grip and go harder, which makes the downforce work harder. The BT62 comes alive, fusing its relentless speed in a near psychopathic mix of the unruffled and the extreme.

Nothing – and I mean nothing – compares to the brakes. These might be the most extreme binders I’ve ever experienced. It hardly matters that the pedal isn’t particularly feelsome, because with ABS, huge slicks and so little weight, you just smash the pedal towards the bulkhead and then bleed off for the corners. They crush scarily big speeds to a near standstill in a way that is both extraordinary and yet soon becomes second nature.

In fact, I actually found the Brabham’s combination of downforce, wanton acceleration and mechanical grip with composed damping through faster corners harder to mentally process and trust, particularly to believe I could feed in the throttle with so much steering angle applied.

For all its approachability and the way it inspires confidence, don’t doubt that the Brabham is very much a senior-level race car, and things will start happening very quickly if you approach its limits – the idea of carrying all the speed you can into a corner, braking as late as possible and then having to correct the car’s trajectory would definitely put your heart in your mouth. I didn’t get close to that in a few laps, but then that’s part of the Brabham’s appeal – it’s supposed to be a challenge.

Just 70 examples will be built, and a car this extreme and expensive does raise questions of who exactly will buy it. Why mix it with cars half as capable on track days when you could just go racing? Actually, many of the potential customers we met during our test already raced (one raced a historic Brabham, another competed in the Ferrari Challenge), and said they’d race their BT62.

There’ll be a customer-driver development program, and a race program that will start with a Britcar invitational debut in the UK and end up at Le Mans, possibly in the hypercar class, depending on how regulations play out.

There are also nods and winks to a more affordable, fully road-homologated model in the near future ‘using the DNA of this car’, but there aren’t details on whether it’ll be road-registered in the US.

Fifty years since Jack Brabham sold his F1 team, it seems the Brabham name is very much back in business.

ON SALE: Now

BASE PRICE: $1.3M

DRIVETRAIN: 5.4-liter V8, six-speed sequential, RWD

OUTPUT: 700 hp @ 7400 rpm, 492 lb-ft torque

CURB WEIGHT: 2,143 lb (dry)

0-60 MPH: Sub-3.0 sec (est)

Pros: Living up to the Brabham heritage

Cons: The low production, high price and road legalities make it unlikely you’ll ever see one

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