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The Council called by Elrond to discuss what to do with the Ring considers that Saruman had betrayed them, and rejects his approach of attempting to challenge Sauron with strength by using the Ring. Once Frodo and his companions set out to destroy the Ring, their route is in part determined by a desire to avoid passing too close to Isengard.

Concept
The Brabham BT55 was intended to make a big step forward in aerodynamic performance over its predecessors. The Brabham team had had a generally uncompetitive season in 1985 with the BT54, a development of the the drivers' title-winning BT52 introduced in 1983. By 1985 the team had reached the limit of its aerodynamic development. The 1985 car won only one race, and Murray decided that a radical approach was needed: "Without doing something, 1986 was looking bleak. At the time we built the BT54, we knew we couldn't find any more downforce..."

Aerodynamic downforce, which pushes the car down onto the track and allows it to go round corners faster, must be balanced between the front and the rear of the car to avoid understeer and oversteer. Downforce is more difficult to generate at the back of the car than the front, because the air is disturbed by its passage over the car, and therefore becomes the limiting factor. V6-engined cars from Williams, McLaren and Lotus were demonstrating "markedly superior aerodynamic grip". Some of their aerodynamic advantage came from using exhaust gases to "blow" the small diffuser allowed behind the rear wheels and increase the downforce it produced; Murray was unable to get a full blown underbody diffuser to work on the BT52-53-54 Brabhams, with the BMW's one-sided exhaust. The new purpose-designed V6 racing engines from Honda, TAG and Renault rivalled the outright power of the production-based straight-four BMW unit used by Brabham with greater fuel efficiency.

A conventional straight four engine, like the BMW Brabham was using, is tall relative to other engine configurations like 'vee' or 'boxer' where the cylinders are tilted away from the vertical. In order to create a large amount of downforce by other means, Murray came up with the concept of a 'lowline' car, with very low bodywork over a tilted over engine, which would allow a large supply of air to reach the rear wing undisturbed. A similar approach of laying down a tall engine to reduce cross sectional area was used in 1950s Championship Car roadsters by the American Kurtis-Kraft and Epperly racing car constructors and by Colin Chapman in the 1958 front-engined Formula One Lotus 16. In order to achieve this, the driver was placed in a lying down position and BMW designed a special version of their four cylinder turbocharged engine with the tall engine block, normally positioned vertically in the car, tilted almost horizontally (18° from horizontal) to reduce the overall height of the unit. Drivers had been placed in the reclining position by Lotus in the early 1960s, but were sitting more upright again by the 1980s.

In popular culture (yeuch!)
Criterion: Is the pop culture ref about the car, or does it merely include the car?

Brabham's world championship victory, and hence the car with which is was achieved, has been celebrated in special issue stamps......

www.motorsportmemorabilia

www.buckinghamcovers.com

Appears in footage shot for the film Grand Prix (film) (Spa race)

Odds & Sods
Despite considerable notice having been given for the start of the 3 litre formula, most teams did not have suitable engines ready for the start of the season. Ferrari and BRM were the only teams with the capacity to build their own engines. Ferrari had existing 3 litre sportscar units (true?) and had an engine prepared for the start of the season. BRM undertook the development of an H-126 unit, which was not ready until later in the season. The others were reliant on outside suppliers. Cooper-Maserati (using a stretched version of a 10 year old design), McLaren with a reduced capacity version of a Ford Indycar engine....? The rest of the serious competitors used under capacity engines: BRM used 2 litre versions of the previous years engines. These were also used by Lotus, who also, along with others (Eagle....), used 2 litre versions of Climax's FMWV or 2.7 litre versions of the venerable 4 cylinder Climax FPF engine. (too long)

Fuel was stored in aluminium tanks, one either side of the cockpit.

In the mid-1960s aerodynamic design was largely aimed at reducing drag and improving stability. Jack Brabham had been alarmed by the tendency of the Lotus 24 he borrowed in 1962 to wander across the road at high speed, caused by lift reducing the contact between the front wheels and the track. Ron Tauranac's work in the MIRA wind tunnel had led him to an understanding of the need to avoid aerodynamic forces lifting the front of the car. Frontal lift reduced the force acting on the front wheels and

Jack Brabham had appeared to be on the verge of retirement from driving during 1964, missing (X) races, usually in favour of Denny Hulme, with Dan Gurney leading the team on the track. Gurney left Brabham to form his own Eagle team at the end of 1964. Brabham has since said that he was reinvigorated by the Repco project.

BRO was based in (?) at New Haw

Racing history
Of the multi-cylinder engines, only the Ferrari and Maserati V12s were ready to compete reliably at the start of the season. Until the new engines were ready, teams used a variety of existing, undersized and consequently underpowered engines from Climax and BRM.