Blimey, is that car covered in dirt or what?! Has it had an almighty ‘off’ and found its way back onto the circuit through a mud bath?! On another day maybe, but not on this day. The car here has been intentionally caked in dirt, or chocolate, or more likely paint.

The car in question is the mighty fine Brabham BT52, of Bernie Ecclestone’s Fila Sport team. Fila sponsored the team in 1983 and so ended up being the name of the team also. The driver amongst the muck is none other than Brazil’s super fast Nelson Piquet Senior. A lot of things changed in F1 at the end of 1982, most notably the fact that ‘ground-effect wing-cars’ and ’skirts’ were out, and flat bottomed cars were in, all in the name of safety. Therefore, the rule book had had some sections re-written, and folk like Gordon Murray read them and then went back  to the drawing board literally. South African Gordon had been employed at Brabham for the last 10 years, and probably felt that his offering for the 1983 season should be kept a closely guarded secret for as long as possible. He was a clever bloke that should be listened to as had created a few winners in his time.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that before the new car’s first test at Brands Hatch, Bernie had called up Aussie artist Rolf Harris to come down to the factory with a large paint brush, and work on a new livery for the upcoming season! What in actual fact is going on here, is the art of camouflage! Where you have an F1 test, you have spies! Not men in long coats with sunglasses looking shifty, but paparazzi photographers poking their long lenses through the fence and having a nosey at what’s going on. As in all uses of ‘camo’, a bit dabbed on here and a bit dabbed on there, can obscure the main lines of the structure. So the idea here is to hide the actual shape, and not really about merging the car ‘commando stlye’ into the Kent scenery. Sometimes designers arranged strips of black tape randomly on the bodywork, which can create a fuzzy flicker effect on images when recorded by a TV or video camera apparently. Intriguing stuff. Camouflaging prototype cars has been around for a long while, and in modern times a road car may get a few bits of plastic bolted on too for extra visual trickery! In our photo, Piquet just gets a bonus dab of paint across his helmet for good measure.

In March 1983, the Brabham was unveiled in Brazil at the Jacarepagua circuit near Rio. Without camouflage, Nelson Piquet drove the car to victory. No messing about! He scored further victories in Italy at Monza and at the European GP at Brands Hatch, the location of the initial test of course. Piquet’s endeavour was enough to win him the Driver’s Championship by just 2 points from Alain Prost in the Renault. This was Piquet’s second title and the first for a car powered by a turbocharged engine, which gave BMW something to cheer about! However, only third place was achieved in the Constructor’s Championship, as Ferrari and Renault stole the top two spots. Nevermind, at least Bernie’s team had their hands on one trophy!

So, who knows, did the camouflage help hide the car’s design? In one respect, no other car really looked like the Brabham that year, as all the teams implemented their own ideas, so yes a bit of camo could have helped!

Photo credit: Unknown, but sourced from Autosprint magazine.