Brabham BT62 to contest first full season of racing in Britcar

Bailey's example, announced at Autosport International on Thursday, is the first customer BT62 sold by the revamped Brabham marque, which won four drivers world championships and 35 Formula 1 grands prix before disappearing from F1 at the end of the 1992 season.

Running a restricted 60% throttle map, the 5.4-litre V8-powered supercar won its first race at Britcar's Brands Hatch 'Into the Night' event in November with sporting director David Brabham and Will Powell driving, and the car has now been admitted to Britcar's approved entry list.

Brabham, whose three-time world champion father Jack started the company in 1966, told Autosport that it marked a tangible step closer to the company's goal of racing at Le Mans.

"It's incredibly significant for the business," he told Autosport. "When we launched, we had racing ambitions, and we had ambitions around a customer racing programme, so it's great to see all that come to fruition now.

"After Brands Hatch, it certainly inspired a lot of people to start talking to us, so we've had a significant amount of interest from potential drivers and teams about buying a BT62 race-spec.

"That's what Paul has bought and it's the next step towards our ultimate goal, which is racing at Le Mans and building that family base of customers to be on that journey with."

The car will be run by the SB Race Engineering outfit, with support from Brabham Motorsport, although 2009 Le Mans winner Brabham said that a works-run car could make cameo appearances in other series throughout the year.

"We're looking at doing some more invitational races in different championships where the car can race," he said.

"We're looking forward to putting those plans together and building the momentum of what we're doing."

The BT62 has repeatedly been linked with a hypercar programme in the World Endurance Championship, and Brabham told Autosport that due diligence was being done before making a firm commitment.

"When we were here a year ago, the hypercar regulations weren't entirely settled and it didn't really look like a direction for us, it was going to be more like GTE, but as those rules have altered its certainly opened up a window," he said.

"We're still assessing the situation. We still need to earn the right to grow as a business to be able to support a programme like that, but certainly it has shifted our focus more towards it.

"We've got a bunch of due diligence to do and feasibility studies to really know what that's looking like, but that's where we're headed."