VALE: Ron Tauranac

Australian motor racing has lost the second half of the Brabham “dynamic duo” with the passing of Ron Tauranac. The British born, Australian raised racecar designer and engineer died on 17 July at his home on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.

Starting Young

Born in England on 13 January, 1925, Ron Tauranac was only three when his family emigrated to Australia. Settling first in Newcastle, where younger brother Austin was born, the family moved to Sydney in 1940, by which time the teenage Ron had left school and gained an apprenticeship at the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation as a draughtsman.

At 18, Ron joined the RAAF and trained as a fighter pilot, both in Australia and Canada, then returned to draughting after the war. He purchased his first car in 1947 and had his introduction to motorsport soon after when he witnessed an amateur race on a NSW airstrip.

Intrigued enough to want to have a go himself, but with no money to buy a race car, Ron decided to build one instead. With younger brother Austin, Ron designed and produced a rudimentary tube frame chassis to house a Norton 500cc motorcycle engine, gearbox, driver and not a lot more. The brothers dubbed their creation the RALT 1 (for Ron and Lewis Austin Tauranac) and debuted it, with Ron behind the wheel, at a hill climb in 1950. Lessons learnt in the RALT 1 (including some learnt the hard way!) saw that design continually updated and improved, with a second car, the RALT 2, built for Austin to race.

Meeting of the Minds

“Conscientious to a fault and peerlessly straight. He was the only bloke with whom I’d have gone into partnership.” So said Jack Brabham of Ron Tauranac in The Jack Brabham Story.

The pair first met in 1951 and were kindred spirits in a way, both being ex-RAAF, both being engineers and both enjoying racing, though Tauranac freely admitted Brabham was the better, more controlled driver. Brabham’s star was already on the rise by this stage, but Tauranac still got the better of him on occasion, including taking out the NSW Hill Climb Championship – in the RALT 1 - in 1954.

After Brabham moved to England in 1955, he maintained a regular correspondence with Tauranac, sharing ideas and solving problems around race car design and engineering. The respect Brabham had for Tauranac’s abilities led to a job offer when the newly-crowned Formula 1 World Champion was looking to break away from Cooper at the end of 1959 and start his own team.

By this stage, Ron had a wife, Norma, and four-year-old daughter, Jann, to consider. And while these family considerations put a halt to his own driving ambitions, Ron nevertheless accepted Brabham’s offer and relocated the family to England in 1960. 

Officially, Ron’s role was tuning roadgoing vehicles for the ‘Jack Brabham Motors’ garage in Surrey, but behind the scenes, he was designing a Formula Junior car for the ‘Motor Racing Developments’ organization that Brabham and Tauranac had formed in a 50:50 partnership.

When Charlie Cooper got wind of what the pair were doing in 1960, it hastened the end of Brabham’s time with Cooper in F1, although he delivered a second world championship for the team that year.

Motor Racing Developments officially broke cover in 1961 as a producer of formula cars bearing the Brabham name (MRD was rejected for its unfortunate similarity to a French obscenity) and ‘BT’ model designation – for Brabham-Tauranac.

Cars were designed and produced for both the nascent Brabham F1 team and customers; the latter helping to pay the bills of the former. Jack himself raced the first BT1 in 1962, but reflecting the growing competitiveness of Formula 1 in the 1960s, the team’s first race win didn’t come until 1964.

Success was more regular thereafter, which was reflected led to increasing customer demand for Brabham chassis.

While pivotal to the development of MRD and its cars throughout this period, Ron was satisfied to remain in the background, leaving the PR, sponsor schmoozing and spotlight to Brabham.

World Champions

While F1 gets all the attention, Formula 2 was equally popular and competitive in the 1960s, with many drivers doing double duty in the junior formula.

MRD/Brabham produced chassis for F2 and F3, with their success in these classes in the mid-1960s replicated in F1 and capped with the ultimate reward when Brabham won the 1966 Formula 1 World Championship in the Tauranac-designed BT19. The following year, Denny Hulme replicated Brabham’s success to win the 1967 World Championship.

While other constructors were moving to monocoque designs during this period, Ron persisted with the spaceframe chassis and only switched to a monocoque for Brabham’s farewell season as a driver in 1970.

With Brabham out in 1971, Tauranac sold the F1 team to Bernie Ecclestone midway through that season. He never moved far away from the sport, though. Tauranac’s success as a designer saw him hired as a consultant to various teams, including Williams and Ligier, before another Aussie brought Tauranac back into the constructor’s arena

RALT Reborn

Larry Perkins was racing F3 in the UK with some success in the early 1970s when he called on Tauranac for advice to improve the GRD chassis he was campaigning. Rather than improve it, Ron redesigned it, leading to the rebirth of the RALT name in 1974.

While they were never campaigned in Formula 1, RALT chassis were dominant in Formula 2, Formula 3 and Formula Atlantic. Continuing with what he knew best, Ron used a spaceframe design for some of the early RALT chassis, too, the most successful of which was the RT3. The likes of Jonathan Palmer, Mika Hakkinen and Ayrton Senna enjoyed junior formula success in a RALT chassis before going on to greater things.

When March bought out RALT in 1988, Ron stayed with the organization for a further five years before leaving to take on more consultancy work, including with Honda, a Renault single-seater project and the Arrows F1 team.

Coming Home, Staying Busy

Following the passing of his wife Norma in 2001, Tauranac returned to Australia, with the success of RALT ensuring a comfortable living in retirement. He remained busy, though, continuing to serve as a consultant to Honda into his 80s and was still dabbling in open wheeler and sportscar designs when he was inducted into the Australian Motorsport hall of Fame in 2017. That honour followed an Order of Australia award in 2002.

More recently, Ron relocated to the Sunshine Coast, where he passed away from natural causes. A small funeral service was held soon after, with plans for a larger memorial in Sydney still to be confirmed at time of writing.

Ron Tauranac is survived by daughters Jann and Julie. JUST CARS extends its sympathies to the Tauranac family and friends.