The short-lived F1 team Brawn GP may have made racing history last year, but team supremo Ross Brawn has no intention of resting on his newly acquired laurels, he tells RICHARD GILLIS
THIS TIME last year, the name Brawn was barely known beyond those who follow Formula One. Today, it is one of the highest-profile and valuable sports brands in the world, having won the F1 World Championship at the first attempt, driven to success by Jenson Button, who also took the drivers’ championship in Brazil last October.
Now Button is gone – a contractual wrangle led to him joining rivals MacLaren – and Brawn GP is no more.
After paying a token £1 to the previous owners – the financially beleagured Honda – for the team in March, Brawn sold it to Mercedes Benz. The team will be rebranded as Mercedes Grand Prix, with Brawn remaining as team principal. Mercedes parent company Daimler and investment company Aabar Investments will share a 75.1 per cent stake, with a 60/40 split in Daimler’s favour. The remaining 24.9 per cent will be held by the current stakeholders.
“We won’t pretend we didn’t have a team last year, because of course the car was developed during the Honda period and was finished off by our new team,” says Brawn, “but to think that the team was created in February and won the championship in October, which has never happened before, is a fairy story.” The contrast, he says, between the glory of the past few months and the “difficulties we had over the winter”, has captured the imagination of the wider public, which tends to be indifferent to the machinations of F1.
“When Honda withdrew its funding in early December 2008, it meant that 700 people had to work through the winter not knowing what was going to happen. There was so much speculation as to the future of the team that we had to ignore that and try to get on with it.”
Key to Brawn GP’s success was a change in F1 rules, allowing for an innovation which transformed a back-of-the-grid also-ran into an unstoppable force. In Paris, the International Automobile Federation’s court of appeal cleared Brawn’s “double-decker” or “split-level” rear diffusers, which rivals claimed broke the spirit of the rules. “The circumstances just came together at the right time, the new regulations created the opportunity to allow us to do what we did,” he says.
Running alongside Brawn’s extraordinary rise to the top in 2009 has been a series of damaging storylines which threaten the long-term commercial health of a sport synonymous with big business. Revelations of race-fixing involving the Renault team were compounded by a schism between the major manufacturers and the FIA, the sport’s governing body, which was resolved by the exit of FIA chief Max Mosley. Add to this the global economic crisis and the grid for next season will take on a different look.
“The thing you have to accept with Toyota, Honda and BMW is that they weren’t doing very well on the track,” says Brawn. “When you’re not performing well on the track, the other issues become more difficult to handle. Honda had two terrible years, which was the reason I joined the team – to try to address that. At times like these, you don’t get a lot of support from within the company. BMW just had their worst year and they’re withdrawing. Toyota haven’t won a race in eight years and they’re withdrawing. Honda had two terrible years and they withdrew. But Ferrari are not redrawing, they’re having a good time; Mercedes likewise.
“The effect of an economic downturn is that the cars at the back of the grid start to question why they’re there and what they’re getting out of the sport. The board at home starts to say: ‘What’s the point of being at the back of the grid for all this money?’”
Formula one was built on the back of tobacco money. The marketing budgets of the likes of Philip Morris, Benson Hedges and West flowed into the sport until EU legislation put an end to such sponsorship in 2006. Brawn agrees the sport is still wrestling with this legacy in the form of huge cost expectations among the top teams.
“Formula One budgets were cranked up in the past to a very high level, sustained by the tobacco companies. Of course, Ferrari still has the backing of Philip Morris, but the rest of the teams have had to do without.”
He points to the new resource restrictions coming in place as “vital to the future of Formula One”.
“Interestingly, in 2010 and 2011 seasons, the budgets will come down to about the level of Brawn GPs current budget. And 2012 looks like it’s even tighter. We believe that with 300 or 400 people employed at sensible cost, it is possible to be competitive without tobacco money.”
Another running storyline in the F1 soap opera in 2009 was the on/off rumours surrounding the British Grand Prix. “The future of the British Grand Prix brings us into another question, a bigger question: what is Formula One? What is it that makes it attractive to fans and to sponsors?” asks Brawn. “Why do places like Abu Dhabi want a F1 Grand Prix?
“It’s because of what Formula One represents. If you take Silverstone away, we may not notice the difference initially. But if you keep taking away Grand Prix from the traditional circuits that make up the history of Formula One and replace them with these new, beautiful circuits from other parts of the world, you weaken the series. The money may not be very different but actually, something intangible is lost and can’t be replaced.”
“The new circuits are fabulous and the investment these countries have made should be applauded, but they are making that investment because they are buying into the history of the sport, which is a reflection of the Formula One brand. If you take Grand Prix away from Silverstone, Monaco, Imola . . . well, those are the circuits that have made Formula One so attractive.
“It is very difficult to quantify the effect, but it erodes bit by bit and makes the series less attractive. The new venues want to join a club. They won’t want to join and the new members will start to dry up. We need to preserve it and find ways of making it work.”
Shortly after this interview took place, it was announced Michael Schumacher, the seven-time F1 world champion, was to drive for Mercedes Grand Prix this year. It’s a classic piece of F1 business from Brawn: a mix of style and substance designed to attract new sponsors to the team as much as to win races.
It is typical that in this most complex of sports, Schumacher’s value to Brawn and his new employers this season will be measured in a number of ways. Driving fast is just part of it.
