Simple question that may not have a simple answer: If a new F1 team struggles to perform well I could see how financial backing can be pulled and the team would be allowed to dissolve. This is no different in many other sports. How does a new team like Brawn GP, in its rookie year, win over established teams and then be allowed to disband after only 1 year? I understand that Brawn was born out of the Honda team but I'm really not clear on how much of those politics work. Seems odd to me that the winning name-sake one year would end up being principal on another team. Anybody care to give me the nickle tour of how this works?
Brawn is a genius. He interpretted the rules and gave his team a huge advantage at the beginning of the season with a trick diffuser if I recall correctly. He was able to win a ruling that his interpretation of the rules was indeed legal. the rest of the teams had to scramble to catch up. This does not happen every year. this year the trick de equipment is the Fduct. RB doesn't seem to have it. The Renault engine seems to be producing more hp than everybody else. RB has a great car and two very good drivers. Nobody has been able to really catch them since the 2nd race.
The money to be spent for the 2009 car, had already been committed by Honda during 2008, and by the time they decided to quit F1 in late 2008, the 2009 car was basically completed, money spent. Ross Brawn had a head start, so the operating budget for 2009 was minimal compared the other front runners. Along with Phil's comment about Brawn being a genius. He so much as told the other teams that the 2009 rules had loopholes, and he even offered to rewrite them, but in their infinite judgement, Ferrari and Toyota killed that idea. Only to have their tailpipes handed to them during 2009 by Team Brawn using one of those loopholes. It appears that this year, Newey has earned that same reference as genius.
Sponsors with less money sponsor lesser teams, and they don't expect the teams to win. They expect the lesser teams to reach an agreed target. The Brawn GP car was in development in 2008 (back in mid 2007, nick fry was asked if the team (honda) was already developing next years car to which he said 'no, I think we're going for the 2009 car'...so you could look at it that the car was 2 years in development since 2007, but not all the 2009 rules where in place yet by then) and had 500m spent on it -much more than any other team. Toyota and williams also had a trick diffuser from the start. Now all teams have them that's why there isn't much overtaking...
F1 doesn't particularly care about the team's name so much as they care that the team shows up and races. Going back a decade or so, the Honda team evolved from BAR, who evolved from Tyrrell. This has happened quite a lot over the years. It has also been debated as to whether BrawnGP had Mercedes waiting in the wings all along, or at least early on, with full intentions of buying out Brawn. It would certainly explain the team's disinterest in chasing sponsorship money last season, especially as they shot to the front of the grid.
Brawn did not "dissolve" after one year. Mercedes bought a stake in the team, allowing the team to be branded as "Mercedes", and be the "official works team". They're still the same team, only Mercedes owns part of it and they changed the name.
By being more clever with their interpretation of the rules. While the spelling of the team name may have changed, the same people are running the game.
Definitely not a normal situation. It takes big money to compete in F1 and Brawn is contributing personally out of pocket which rarely happens.
I don't believe that's correct - Sorry! He was, to all intents and purposes, handed the keys to the Honda factory towards the end of 2008. Furthermore, the car for '09 was basically done and Honda continued to fund the entire operation in order to not have to lay people off etc - The story is it was cheaper to do that than close it all down (as has happened with Toyota after they failed to sell their team). Ross may not have been pulling a huge salary in '09, but I don't think he did any "personal funding" of the team. As has been said, they were hardly desperate for sponsors last year, and I suspect the deal with Merc to supply engines had clauses along the lines of "if this works out, we reserve the right to buy your entire team prior to 2010." But I could be wrong! Cheers, Ian PS, returning to the OP, for many years the evil pygmy's deal with the race organizers stipulated 20 cars on the grid. So, when any of 'em were having "difficulties" he'd step in, one way or another, to keep 'em going as that's cheaper for him than defaulting on his contracts. Many, many teams have morphed into "new" outfits over the years whereas this year is *incredibly* unusual with the 3 genuine newbies.
