In case you have been cast into a particularly opaque motorsport limbo this last week, you will know that Ross Brawn, 55 in November, has pulled off a stunning achievement. The team he created out of the ashes of Honda’s withdrawal from Formula One has executed a stunning double victory in the drivers’ and constructors’ world championship.<\/p>\n
But Brawn, by his own admission, is not a hands-on design ace, sketching out ideas on the back of fag packets or waking up during the night with that \u2018lightbulb\u2019 idea. That, he admits, is more his rival Adrian Newey, whose Red Bull RB5 has made such a fight of the second half of this season\u2019s championship. Ross is renowned for his depth of experience and his man management expertise.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes,\u201d he says, \u201cVery good people can be worried about the competitiveness of the racing environment, worried about making a mistake or getting something wrong. What I try to do is put people in the right places, give them the benefit of my experience, encourage them to perform and hopefully bring the best out of them. I\u2019ve worked with some very good teams in my career and this Brawn team is one of the best.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brawn\u2019s first racing role was with the March team in 1976. He joined Williams two years later and worked everything from a milling machine to a wind tunnel. After design jobs with both the Haas Lola and Arrows teams, he was recruited by Jaguar and brought F1 technology to the superb Jaguar XJR14 which won the world sportscar championship in 1991. Tom Walkinshaw then took him to Benetton as technical director, where he masterminded back-to-back world championships for Michael Schumacher in 1994-5.<\/p>\n
When Schumacher left for Ferrari he took Ross with him and over the next decade, under Jean Todt\u2019s management and Brawn\u2019s technical leadership, Ferrari dominated Formula 1 in a manner never witnessed before. Brawn earned a reputation as a demon race strategist, but modestly says, \u2018I think you\u2019ve got a bit more flexibility when you\u2019ve got Michael in the cockpit!\u2019<\/p>\n
After working in such an intense environment for so long, Brawn needed a sabbatical and spent 2007 indulging one of his other great passions \u2013 fishing. When he returned to the F1 fray it was as team principal of Honda.<\/p>\n
But then Honda dropped a bombshell. Amid the credit crunch, with car sales plummeting and factory closures, it withdrew from F1. Brawn, if not quite kicking and screaming, was led somewhat reluctantly into the realms of team ownership. It was, he says, never an ambition to have his name above the door but a management buyout was the only viable way to save 700 plus jobs at Honda F1\u2019s Brackley HQ.<\/p>\n
Experts estimated it would have cost Honda $100 million plus in redundancies to close the team and so, instead, the Japanese allowed Brawn to take it off their hands and provided part of an operating budget for the first year.<\/p>\n\n\t\t