came from the Rubery Owen Group and Alfred Owen, who, despite the trying times with the car, had remained loyal to the project. In this period the team missed an opportunity to move the entire effort to the Midlands where, due to the prevalence of British motor companies, the team would have benefited from greater and more convenient technical and engineering support. Instead the team remained at The Maltings at Bourne. Also in 1953, the BRM had a moment of glory at Albi. Three cars were entered in a sprint race specifically for Formula One cars. Driven by a now-recovered Fangio, González and Wharton, their main competitor was a works' Ferrari driven by Alberto Ascari. Fangio went on to win a heat race in spectacular fashion, although Wharton had a bad crash and did not finish. In addition, the BRMs had also suffered from tyre problems. Ascari later commented that with all the noise produced by the BRMs he had been almost unable to hear anything else while driving. This race is regarded as showing what Formula One could have been like had it been continued into 1953. During the race Fangio's car's V16 ran at a claimed 72 psi boost (4.9 ata) and 585 bhp (436 kW) at 11,800 rpm, the car reaching 186 mph (300 km/h). At around this time Tony Rudd, who had by then joined BRM after his previous period of secondment from Rolls-Royce, suggested that they build a lightweight, short-wheelbase, version of the car for this sort of race, and this subsequently became the Mark II or Type 30. Two were built; the first used components from the wreck of Wharton's car damaged at Albi. Rudd was thinking of chasing the Class F Record with the car, and asked his former employers what they thought the engine was capable of if tuned for all-out speed for only a few miles. Rudd stated that Rolls-Royce replied; "They said it would pull 800hp with all the goodies and 1,000hp with a sprint fuel". However, the attempt on the record was never made. Amongst the other drivers, the Type 15 Mark II/Type 30 was also driven by Ron Flockhart. The cars were raced in 1954 and 1955 while BRM worked on a car for the new Formula One specification of 2.5 litres un-supercharged. By this time the V16-powered cars were running quite reliably, but the demise of the