BRP History & Team Record

The team was formed by two men with a close association to Stirling Moss - his father, Alfred Moss and his manager, Ken Gregory in 1958. It set up shop at the Moss family farm in Hertfordshire and hired Stirling's longtime mechanic Tony Robinson to run the cars, painted in a distinctive pale green.

With Stirling driving for both Vanwall and Rob Walker Racing, BRP chose Vanwall #2 Stuart Lewis-Evans and Tommy Bridger to drive a new Cooper F2 in various events, including the 1958 Moroccan Grand Prix at Casablanca. It was here that Lewis-Evans died when his Vanwall crashed and burned, leading the team to withdraw from Formula One - and leaving Stirling Moss without a works drive for 1959.

The team expanded to two entries for 1959, running F2 Coopers with both Climax and German-made Borgward engines. Englishmen Ivor Bueb and George Wicken where signed to drive, once again in various F1 and F2 class events but Wicken was replaced mid-season by the promising Chris Bristow. Bueb failed to qualify at the Monaco GP, finished 13th at the British GP and was then killed during an F2 event at Clermont-Ferrand.

The team also entered a loaned F1 BRM which was driven by Stirling Moss at the French (finishing 3rd, but was disqualified for a push start when he spun) and at the British Grand Prix, where he finished 2nd. For the next GP at Avus in Germany, the car was driven by Hans Herrmann who had one of the most spectacular crashes ever seen - and walked away from it - but completely destroyed the car.

Gregory scored a major coup for the 1960 season by bringing in Yeoman Credit Ltd. as the team title sponsor and the team ran many more GP races with three F2-spec Coopers. The promising season turned out to be a very tragic one when first, the designated lead driver American Harry Schell was killed in practice for the International Trophy race. Tony Brooks was brought in as a replacement and finished 4th in Monaco, alongside Chris Bristow, while the third car was shared among a variety of drivers. The Belgian race at Spa saw Olivier Gendebien bring the car home in 3rd place, but was one of the darkest weekends in the sport's history.  Stiring Moss and Mike Taylor were both badly injured in practice crashes and during the race both Alan Stacey and Chris Bristow died in vicious accidents. The season continued and the team even entered a fourth car for Phil Hill at the US GP at Riverside, but relations with the owners of Yeoman Credit deteriorated badly and they took their money to Reg Parnell's new team the following year.

Once again, Ken Gregory moved to find a new source of money for the team and United Dominions Trust (UDT) subsidiary, Laystall Engineering was brought in with a two year contract to entered events as "UDT Laystall Racing Team", however longtime supplier Cooper refused to sell them cars and they turned to Colin Chapman's Lotus firm for both F1/F2 and sports cars to race. Cliff Allison joined Henry Taylor at the opening of the Grand Prix season, before Belgian Lucien Bianchi and American Masten Gregory took turns, none of which yielded points, though the team did have some success in minor events.

For 1962 the team ran almost the whole Formula 1 season with Innes Ireland partnering Gregory in the updated Lotus 18/21-Climax and 24 chassis, which ran both Climax and BRM V8 engines, but it was not until the final two races of the year (USA and South Africa) that any points were scored.

The UDT-Laystall deal ended and Lotus did not make the highly successful 25 monocoque chassis available to customers, so the team decided to build its own chassis for 1963 as well as run the existing Lotus 24. Tony Robinson designed the BRP 1 and was debuted at the second GP by Innes Ireland, while American Jim Hall continued in the Lotus with both powered by the BRM V8. Ireland surprised everyone by finishing 4th at the Dutch GP in the BRP 1/63's second race and repeated the feat later in the season at Monza. Stirling Moss drove the older Lotus 18/21-Climax in a couple of non-championship races during 1961 and '62 and he took more of a management role as he recovered from the accident that ended his driving career, with Ken Gregory stepping back.

The BRP 2-BRM was produced for 1964 with Innes Ireland and Trevor Taylor driving. Although they had some non-championship success, once again it was late into the GP season before a few points were scored. More importantly was the rejection of the teams' application to join the new Formula One Constructors Association (FOCA) due to opposition by Ferrari, Lotus and BRM and it spelled the end of its participation in Grand Prix. The team entered a BRP-Ford for Masten Gregory in the 1965 Indianapolis 500 and attempted to return to F1 for 1966 before finally closing its doors.

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