Editing Bernie Ecclestone (section)

=== Brabham ===
During the [[1971 Formula One season|1971 season]], Ecclestone was approached by [[Ron Tauranac]], owner of the Brabham team, who was looking for a suitable business partner. Ecclestone made him an offer of £100,000 for the whole team, which Tauranac eventually accepted.<ref name="formulaonetremayne-pp8"/> Tauranac stayed on as designer and to run the factory, while [[Colin Seeley]] was briefly brought in against Tauranac's wishes to assist in design and management.<ref>Lawrence (1999) p. 116 Tauranac claims that Ecclestone initially offered £130,000, but lowered the offer at the last minute. Ecclestone denies that this happened. Lovell (2004) pp.32–33</ref>

Ecclestone and Tauranac were both dominant personalities and Tauranac left Brabham early in the [[1972 Formula One season|1972 season]]. The team achieved little during 1972, as Ecclestone moulded the team to fit his vision of a Formula One team. He abandoned the highly successful customer car production business established by [[Jack Brabham]] and Tauranac – reasoning that to compete at the very front in Formula One you must concentrate all of your resources there. For the [[1973 Formula One season|1973 season]], Ecclestone promoted [[Gordon Murray]] to chief designer. The young South African produced the triangular cross-section BT42, the first of a series of Ford-powered cars with which the Brabham team would take several victories in 1974 and 1975 with [[Carlos Reutemann]] and [[Carlos Pace]].

[[File:Reutemann ecclestone.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Ecclestone (right) with [[Carlos Reutemann]] at the [[1975 Austrian Grand Prix]]]]
Despite the increasing success of Murray's nimble Ford-powered cars, Ecclestone signed a deal with [[Alfa Romeo in Formula One|Alfa Romeo]] to use its powerful but heavy flat-12 engine from the [[1976 Formula One season|1976 season]]. Although this was financially beneficial, the new BT45s were unreliable and the Alfa engines rendered them significantly overweight. The 1976 and [[1977 Formula One season|1977 seasons]] saw Brabham fall towards the back of the field again, before winning two races again in the [[1978 Formula One season|1978 season]] when Ecclestone signed the Austrian double world champion [[Niki Lauda]], intrigued by Murray's radical [[Brabham BT46|BT46]] design.

The Brabham-Alfa era ended in 1979, the team's first season with the up-and-coming young Brazilian [[Nelson Piquet]] when Alfa Romeo started testing its own Formula One car during that season. This prompted Ecclestone to revert to Cosworth DFV engines – a move Murray described as "like having a holiday".

Piquet formed a close and long-lasting relationship with Ecclestone and the team, losing the title after a narrow battle with [[Alan Jones (racing driver)|Alan Jones]] in 1980 and eventually winning in 1981 and 1983. In the summer of 1981 Brabham had tested a car powered by a [[BMW in Formula One|BMW]] [[turbocharger|turbo]] engine, and [[1982 Formula One season|1982]]'s new BT50 was powered by [[BMW Sauber|BMW]]'s turbocharged four-cylinder [[BMW M10|M10]]. Brabham continued to run the Ford-powered BT49D in the early part of the season while reliability and driveability issues were sorted out by BMW and its technical partner [[Robert Bosch GmbH|Bosch]]. Ecclestone and BMW came close to splitting before the turbo car duly took its first win at the [[1982 Canadian Grand Prix]] but the partnership took the first turbo-powered world championship in 1983.

The team continued to be competitive until 1985. At the end of the year, Piquet left after seven years. He was unhappy with the money that Ecclestone was willing to offer him and went to [[Williams F1|Williams]] where he would win his third championship. The following year, Murray, who since 1973 had designed cars that had scored 22 GP wins, left Brabham to join McLaren. Brabham continued under Ecclestone's leadership to the end of the 1987 season, in which the team scored only eight points. BMW withdrew from Formula One after the [[1987 Formula One season|1987 season]].

Having bought the team from Ron Tauranac for approximately $120,000 at the end of 1971, Ecclestone eventually sold it for over US$5 million to a Swiss businessman, Joachim Luhti in 1988.<ref name="Bower" />