The Brabham BT53 was a Formula One car designed by Gordon Murray for the Brabham team for the 1984 Formula One season and was a development of the BT52 which had carried the team's lead driver Nelson Piquet to the 1983 championship. The car was almost identical to the final development version of the 1983 car, the BT52B, but featured larger sidepods for improved cooling, and the turbochargers and intercoolers were repositioned for better fuel efficiency as refuelling stops were now banned, leading to the car having to carry an enlarged (220 litre) fuel tank. The turbocharged BMW M12 engine now produced around 900 bhp (671 kW; 912 PS) in qualifying trim, de-tuned to 800 bhp (597 kW; 811 PS) for the races, making it the most powerful car ever seen in F1 at the time. This power allowed Piquet to record the fastest speed trap of the 1984 season when he clocked 325 km/h (202 mph) on the 1 km long straight at the old Kyalami circuit during qualifying for Round 2 of the championship in South Africa.

The car was driven by reigning world champion Piquet who was joined at Brabham by the Fabi brothers Teo and Corrado in a shared drive allowing older brother Teo to honor commitments in the North American–based Champ Car World Series for Forsythe Racing (Teo Fabi had started racing Champ Car for Forsythe in 1983 and sat on the pole for the 1983 Indianapolis 500, being only the second rookie in 500 history to do so). Corrado replaced Teo three times in 1984, the first being Monaco when Teo was racing in Milwaukee. The other two were in North America as Teo missed both the Canadian and Dallas Grands Prix while racing at Portland and Cleveland respectively. Teo Fabi also missed the season ending Portuguese Grand Prix when he was racing the Champ Car race at Laguna Seca. Fabi was replaced in Portugal by Manfred Winkelhock who had raced the first 13 races of the season for the ATS team.

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