“It was a close-run thing, though,” recalls Pilbeam. “I was stood next to the car after the race when I noticed my feet were wet. A stone had gone through a radiator.”

Donington Park, with its sweeps and plunges, does a passable impression of the much-missed old Kyalami. My ‘Beltoise’, though, needs a lot of work. Even so, what strikes me immediately about P201/02 is how many options it gives you. That sonorous V12 pulls away from as low as 1500rpm and will happily short-shift from 6500 on. Which is handy because I’m having my usual early stirrings with an unfamiliar gearbox. The P161 five-speeder has no detent spring and I’m vaulting over the gate and catching the corner between third and dogleg first.  I’m still wrestling with the best method of cog-swappery when Justin Law’s Bud Light Jag almost blows me off the track.

Plan B: third for the Esses – we’re on the short circuit – and fourth everywhere else. It works a treat and frees up my tiny journalistic brain to concentrate on lines and braking points – they’re mine and I’m sticking to them – and that fantastic sound. Exiting Coppice faster each time I eventually see 10,000rpm in fourth (9,500 in top on my last lap) as I pass under the Dunlop Bridge. And to think that, like Nigel Tufnell’s custom-built Marshall amp, it will go to 11.

Geoff Johnson’s P142 – originally a two-valver designed for sports cars – is renowned for its smooth delivery. But is it too linear?  There’s none of that DFV kick out of corners or top-end grunt at the end of straights. Current driver (and preparer) Rob Hall reckons this 1968 design, albeit reworked by Aubrey Woods – four-valve heads, inlets to the inside of the vee – delivers around 420bhp at a safe 10,500rpm. That’s 50 down on a period DFV, albeit with a few hundred revs still to go. But just as telling is the packaging: this V12 is longer, taller and heavier by a full 80lb than its Cosworth rival. Yet it’s not stiff enough to act as a stressed member and is supported by an A-frame. It needed more fuel too: a tanked-up Lotus 72 carried 40 gallons, P201 had room for 47.

“You can feel that weight,” says Hall. “But you can work with it. You can chuck it in on the brakes, which are excellent, and catch that pendulum effect on the way out. The steering is very light; Beltoise used to drive with one arm, basically [his left was badly injured in a 1964 crash at Reims].”

Yeah well, I’ve got two left feet, which is why I leave the scruff-of-the-neck stuff to the experts. I’m instead left with (tinnitus-assisted) memories of a silky machine that takes you to extremely high levels of performance with the minimum of fuss. But then I’m not trying to match a Lauda pole. Beltoise had his arm full.

BRM’s 1974 went into steady decline after the dizzy heights of high-altitude Kyalami. The Belgian GP at Nivelles wasn’t too bad – Beltoise qualified seventh and finished fifth – but there would be no more point scores as the retirements and non-classifications began to rack up: engine, gearbox, ancillary drive belt, engine, electrics.

“The basic problem was that money was tight,” says Pilbeam. “The cars were built okay, but after South Africa we had a lot of blowups and the team was having to reclaim blocks, weld and patch stuff that should have been thrown away. The engine wasn’t bad – at its best. As for the car, I wasn’t happy with its radiator installation and I would’ve liked to tidy up the rear end…”

But a disillusioned Pilbeam would leave at the end of 1974. As would long-time team manager Tim Parnell: “I wasn’t happy with the way things were going. Nobody seemed to know what was going on. Sir Alfred Owen [BRM’s longtime industrialist owner] was very ill and his sons were saying they could not afford to keep backing the team. The company, Rubery Owen, was a big supplier to British Leyland, and BL was in a mess… the whole country was. When it became clear Louis Stanley would take over the team, I knew it would be a disaster. He loved playing Formula 1, but he didn’t really understand it. That was a shame because P201 was a step forward. It had a fantastic chassis – but the engines weren’t good enough.”

The team unveiled its Peter Windsor-Smith-designed shortstroke V12 (new heads, wider valve angle) at Nivelles, where it gave Henri Pescarolo, still in a P160E, his best qualifying of the year: 15th. Beltoise tried it in a P201 at Dijon, but chose to race the older unit. He sampled it again at Brands Hatch, where it went bang in practice. It let go in Austria too. And even when it worked Beltoise felt short-changed.

“That engine (P200) was supposed to be our saviour,” remembers chief mechanic Alan Challis. “But the drivers preferred the older motor. Plus there weren’t enough bits to build enough of the new one.

“But what really hurt us was that the qualifying tyre we raced on in South Africa wasn’t suited to the sea-level European tracks. The difference between the qualifying tyre and the race tyre at those races was much greater.” The Euro qualifier was too soft to last a race distance, and although P201 invariably sat on the softest race tyre on offer it perhaps could have gone softer still. BRM wasn’t alone as Firestone-shod Surtees and Williams also tumbled down the grids after qualifying second and third at Kyalami. It was obvious who was winning the tyre war. Free-spending Goodyear had rounded up the big names – Lotus, Tyrrell, McLaren, Ferrari and Brabham – forcing Firestone to live on the scraps before pulling out for good at the end of a winless season.

BRM seemingly hit rock bottom at Monza where all three P20s had retired by the fourth lap – all for different reasons. But then Beltoise crashed out of what would be his last GP, the US at Watkins Glen, in first practice. Pressing too hard too soon on cold tyres, he chipped an ankle bone in the subsequent shunt. New recruit Chris Amon – he’d labelled P201 “undriveable” in Canada – spent the whole of that GP “on the door-handles” and drove brilliantly to qualify 12th and finish a distant ninth. And that, in truth, was this package’s absolute limit. Nobody as good as Amon ever climbed into P201 again, and it was left to the inexperienced Mike Wilds and Bob Evans (1975), Ian Ashley (for the team’s singleton GP of ’76) and the ‘Cowangie Kid’ to nail down its – if not quite yet the team’s – lid.

Yes, P201 died an undistinguished death, but for those who sought out the British Racing Motors’ performances before reading the rest of a Motoring News or Autosport GP report, it will be remembered fondly as the car that caused the last skip of the beat.

***

Stanley’s laurels (or lack of them)

BRM P201/02 was completed in the 1974 Monaco GP paddock and Jean-Pierre Beltoise undertook some leisurely laps with it during final practice. It was fitted with outboard front brakes. Henri Pescarolo gave the car (front brakes now inboard) its race debut at the next GP, the Swedish. He qualified 19th, but pulled off the grid due to a fire caused by a cracked fuel-injector pipe. Beltoise then used 02 in Holland (gearbox), France (a lapped 10th), Britain (a very distant 12th), Germany (electrics) and Austria (engine).

The third P201 was ready in time for the German GP, and the fourth made its debut in Italy. Beltoise switched to 03 at the latter race and so 02, which had been straightened after John Watson’s crash in a Silverstone test, was handed to third driver François Migault: he qualified last and retired on the first lap with a broken input shaft!

The following year, under the Stanley-BRM banner, 02 gave Bob Evans his GP debut in South Africa: he qualified 25th and finished 15th, two laps down. Two weeks later he used it to finish sixth in the Race of Champions.

The team built a fifth P201 for this campaign but 02 was often pressed into action as the designated spare: Evans finished ninth in Belgium, qualified 23rd in Sweden (but raced 05 to 13th), sampled the short-stroke motor in final practice in Holland, finished 17th in France and retired with engine failure in Austria.

“P201 wasn’t a bad car — it handled and braked well — but it was let down by its engine,” says Evans. “I reckon we had no more than 410bhp. With a DFV I think it would’ve been a regular top-six finisher. We made some developments a wider front nose that helped in the medium speed corners and a narrower front track and we got rid of the airbox Jackie Stewart had called ‘a tent’.

“I’d expected BRM to be a step up from our little F5000 outfit: it wasn’t. Louis Stanley was in a dream world. He thought he was Britain’s Enzo Ferrari. His office at Bourne was dimly lit and had one of those ceiling lamps you could pull down. He’d have it so low that you couldn’t see his face. It was all pretence. We didn’t even have a decent F3 budget. It was laughable really. Sad too.”

***

TechSpec – 1974 BRM P201/02

Chassis: Type: Aluminium bathtub monocoque. Front suspension: double wishbone, outboard springs.  Rear suspension: lower wishbone, single top link, twin radius rods, outboard springs.  Wheelbase 101.5in.   Track (f/r) 60/62in.

Engine: Type BRM P142 V12, 2998cc. Bore/stroke: 74.7/57.2mm. Compression: 11:1. Fuel injection: Lucas. Ignition system: Lucas & Marelli
Transmission: BRM 5-speed gearbox; Borg & Beck clutch.

Running Gear: Koni dampers; BRM rack and pinion steering; Lockheed inboard disc brakes f & r.