With just six weeks until the opening race in Brazil, this left Brabham with three fully built BT51s ready to go that were now useless, so Murray started from scratch and he designed the BT52.

The car featured a distinctive dart-shaped profile and oversized rear wing in an effort to claw back as much downforce as possible, while the monocoque was built from aluminium and carbon fibre composite to keep weight as low as possible.

Fighting with Alain Prost in the Renault and René Arnoux of Ferrari, it seemed he would lose out on the title after a run of mid season bad luck.

Patrese on the other hand seemed to corner the market on Brabham's bad luck and while often as quick or quicker than Piquet (including leading the San Marino Grand Prix before crashing out with only six laps remaining, and grabbing pole at Monza) he didn't score a point until his third place finish in Round 10 at the German Grand Prix.

A further update came later in the season when Brabham adopted the Ferrari style winglets on the rear wing in order to generate more downforce.