Team effort: Brawn rejoice after their remarkable debut season
In the sparse team office close to garage 20, Ross Brawn, the principal who made this little miracle happen, is struggling to put emotions into words.
Brawn is an engineer, a behind-the-scenes guy and, as such, unlikely to win the personality awards that await Button back home. The team bears his name, but ego trips are not his thing. He is plainly uncomfortable with any suggestion his team name is eponymous because of a lust for personal glory.
‘It was awkward at the beginning to even see my name there,’ Brawn said. ‘did go through a lot of permutations at first. Pure Racing was one, but Mercedes were supplying the engine and Pure Mercedes didn’t sound right.
‘So we were consulting them and Caroline McGrory, our legal secretary, said we should call it Brawn and there were no objections. I felt awkward. It is an odd thing but I have got used to it now. And today, I am very proud and honoured that my name is carried by the team.
‘When I left Ferrari, they kindly gave me a replica of the constructors’ trophy, which I keep in my study. There are all the little badges that go round it, Ferrari and Lotus and McLaren. And we are going to have Brawn GP on there now. That feeling is indescribable. Just so special, really.’
Super human: Team principal Ross Brawn has worked wonders in Formula One this season, as this advertising banner boasts
Brawn GP rose from the ashes of Honda’s decision to pull out of Formula One in December last year, with Brawn, Honda’s technical director and the intelligence behind Michael Schumacher’s seven titles at Ferrari, initiating a management buy-out completed perilously close to race time.
The entry fee was waived due to Brawn GP’s straitened existence and drivers Button and Rubens Barrichello took massive pay cuts to remain employed. Memories ofthose days were Brawn’s inspiration when asked to articulate the triumph.
Brawn said: ‘We had a team of people who worked through a whole winter not knowing if they had a future. They did whatever it took, put in 60 to 70 hours a week for a team that didn’t exist. It was so very close to not happening. There were days when I went home thinking it was all over.
‘The great thing with the management group was there were five of us and we were not all down at the same time. So I would go home desperate, get a phone call from Nick Fry (Honda F1’s chief executive officer who stayed on with Brawn GP), saying he had found a way around it. On other days, I would do the same for him.
'There was a group of people who saw no alternative but to find a solution and others who faced being put on the street, yet stuck with and supported us, even though they had no idea how it would end.
‘Is it a fairytale? I’m not sure what a fairytale is, but we took something that was on its knees and got it to where we are today, and that has been an exceptional experience.
‘Survival was our first objective, genuinely. Get to the first race and try to put the thing on its feet, see if we can find funding for the future. Nick and I were totally absorbed in trying to keep the company going so, in the background, other management staff embraced the technical side. I had no clue where we would finish.
‘All I knew was we had a car which was a good step from where we were before and when the testing began we didn’t see any other cars performing in the way we thought you should with the new regulations. It sounds arrogant but that was our analysis and it made us even more determined to get off the ground because then we knew we had a good car.’
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