Brabham has not given up on Lauda

Press, 19 December 1985, Page 40

Brabham has not given up on Lauda

The Brabham Formula One racing team and its engine supplier, BMW, are apparently still entertaining hopes that the Austrian former world champion driver, Niki Lauda, can be lured out of retirement to race the revolutionary Brabham-BMW 8T55 next year.

A BMW spokesman was quoted by “Autosport,” Britain’s leading weekly motor sport magazine, as saying that the Bavarian car-maker still had its hopes that the promising 8T55 would tempt Lauda to change his mind.

In the meantime, Elio de Angelis and Riccardo Patrese have been undertaking a test programme with this year’s Brabham 8T54 at the Paul Ricard circuit. Although team boss Bernie Ecclestone has still to announce his drivers for--1986, it seems probable that the two Italians have already signed contracts.

The new 8T55 is still some way off and it may well be that Ecclestone and BMW will attempt to coax Lauda back to racing once the new car has shown itself

to be a potential winner. However, Lauda, who has already made one racing comeback to join McLaren and win the World Drivers’ Championship for the third time, was adamant in Adelaide at the time of the Australian Grand Prix that he had finished with the sport, even though he had been offered a king’s ransom to go to Brabham. Although Lauda’s 1985 racing season with McLaren paled almost to insignificance in the shadow of that of his French team-mate Alain Prost, who has just become the first French world drivers’ champion, Formula One will not be the same without the Lauda magic and mystique in the minds of a large section of Grand Prix race followers.

In fact, with the loss of Lauda and withdrawal of Renault, Alfa Romeo and RAM from the Grand Prix scene, the Formula One grids are going to lack some colour next season.

However there is a strong likelihood that a new team from -Switzerland will join the Grand Prix circus.

If everything works out

as planned, the Ekstrom Formula One team, comprising a single car, will make its debut at the 1986 San Marino Grand Prix.

The venture is being backed by Mrs Cecilia Ekstrom who, with her husband George Paulin, fielded a F3OOO March for a limited campaign undertaken by Eric Lang this year.

Mrs Ekstrom has now set her sights on motor racing’s ultimate challenge and is understood to have secured sponsorship from three companies as well as an engine deal with Carlo Chiti and a tyre contract with Pirelli.

The Ekstrom contender, designated the GP-8601, will be powered by the same Motori Modern} V 6 engine used by the Minardi team this year. This new racing enterprise will have its headquarters in Mrs Ekstrom’s home town, Flims, which is near St Moritz. At present she is reticent about the people she intends to employ, her sponsors and who she proposes to engage as a driver. However, it is her intention to field a two-car team in 1987.