Brawn

Interesting facts

Honda announced its withdrawal from Formula One in December 2008, amid the global financial crisis, but on 6 March 2009 Ross Brawn bought the works team for just one pound in a management buyout. The FIA approved the name change on 17 March, so barely three weeks before the season opener, essentially from nothing, the team entered the Australian Grand Prix as Brawn GP. The car, originally designed as the Honda RA109 and renamed BGP 001, had to be hastily reworked to take a Mercedes engine instead of a Honda unit - team management said the Mercedes engine alone accounted for half of the performance gain. The season immediately sparked controversy: four rival teams protested against Brawn GP's double diffuser, but the FIA declared it legal in April 2009 after appeal hearings, letting the team keep its aerodynamic edge all season. Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello dominated the field all year, and Button sealed the drivers' title on 18 October at the Brazilian Grand Prix with a fifth-place finish. In its only season, Brawn GP won both world titles - constructors' and drivers' - closing out its brief existence with a perfect, one-hundred-percent record. On 16 November 2009 Daimler and Aabar Investments bought a 75.1% stake in the team for around £110 million, and it continued from 2010 as Mercedes GP. Brawn competed in Formula 1 for a single season, in 2009, as a British team. Brawn won the Constructors' Championship once, in 2009. The team scored a total of 172 constructors' championship points.