Brabham built 46 BT18’s in three different configurations as F2 or F3 cars.
This is one of three cars 'given' by Jack Brabham and Ron Tauranac to Graham Warner, manager of the Chequered Flag Racing Team, to run as the de facto F3 works cars in the UK and Europe in 1966.
Chris Irwin won the British F3 Championship with this car. It had the F2 space frame but in that year, in F3 guise it ran a Cosworth 997cc MAE “screamer” engine. In 1968 a Lotus twin cam was fitted, it is in this configuration that it is currently raced.
Tim Kuchel bought the car in the UK in 1981 and it was a classic “barn find”. He brought it back to Australia and had it restored over a four year period. Since the completion of the full rebuild in 1987 Tim had the car consistently at the pointy end of grids throughout Australia.
Then in 2015 Tim took the car to the UK where he raced it for three consecutive years. At the end of 2017 they returned to Australia with Tim tragically diagnosed with lung cancer two weeks later. It was to this illness that he succumbed in December 2019.
Tim had many cars, but his sentimental favourite was the BT18 and he asked that it should not be sold and that it remain within the family and it’s now being raced by brother Rod and nephew Shane Kuchel.
