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[f1ea]

Not necessarilly sandbagging, but actually not showing their true potential.

1. Jenson had a confortable lead. no need to push much...
2. Rubens' was partly damaged. No way of knowing how much performance was lost...
3. The track is not a regular track to which anybody tunes their car and not a track that really shows how good the car can be. Scared to see what they can do in Sepang and Turkey...

I hope the other teams catch up or it will be quite boring. Mainly because they basically starved the previous seasons. So it is not really fair to Mclaren, Ferrari, BMW and even Renault who have been actually competing and keeping the F1 show interesting for a few seasons... so the truth is, Brawn has been borrowing from the past yr's cars more than the other teams have been able to. I dont find this in the best interest of the sport. Maybe when budget caps are introduced this will make more sense... but for the time being i guess its ok.

Also, i dont like the way the whole diffuser thing has been playing out. There should have been an extraordinary hearing to decide whether it is legal or not.

And by the way, I really dislike the silly neon looking Brawn livery / logo, although the car itself looks great...

oh boy... i've just slapped Cinderella.........

[darwin dali]

Not necessarilly sandbagging, but actually not showing their true potential.

1. Jenson had a confortable lead. no need to push much...
2. Rubens' was partly damaged. No way of knowing how much performance was lost...
3. The track is not a regular track to which anybody tunes their car and not a track that really shows how good the car can be. Scared to see what they can do in Sepang and Turkey...

I hope the other teams catch up or it will be quite boring. Mainly because they basically starved the previous seasons. So it is not really fair to Mclaren, Ferrari, BMW and even Renault who have been actually competing and keeping the F1 show interesting for a few seasons... so the truth is, Brawn has been borrowing from the past yr's cars more than the other teams have been able to. I dont find this in the best interest of the sport. Maybe when budget caps are introduced this will make more sense... but for the time being i guess its ok.

Also, i dont like the way the whole diffuser thing has been playing out. There should have been an extraordinary hearing to decide whether it is legal or not.

And by the way, I really dislike the silly neon looking Brawn livery / logo, although the car itself looks great...

oh boy... i've just slapped Cinderella.........

You bad bad boy you!

[darwin dali]

Sponsors race to join Richard Branson and Ross Brawn
Richard Branson
Kevin Eason, Sports News Correspondent

The Formula One team that were down and out of business have been transformed into a £50million goldmine in the space of 48 hours. Sponsors are beating a path to the door of Brawn GP after Jenson Button's astonishing victory in the Australian Grand Prix on Sunday, the team's first outing.

Button's depleted squad, pared to the minimum to keep down costs, arrived in Melbourne with a pure white car without a sponsor, save for their tyre supplier, Bridgestone. By the time a triumphant Nick Fry, the team's chief executive, got off a jumbo jet from Melbourne yesterday, the phone was ringing off the hook with calls from big companies wanting to get involved in sport's biggest comeback for years while the team were being valued at more than £50million.

Sir Richard Branson's bold decision to put his Virgin brand on the car just hours before the grand prix was followed by Button's win for a team that only four weeks ago were preparing to shut their gates for good after Honda's announcement in December that it was walking away from Formula One. Negotiations for a long partnership with Virgin, which could be worth £10million a year, should be tied up soon to make Branson's company the team's chief sponsor. But industry experts say that Branson has had his money's worth out of the team in one weekend.

According to SportsPro magazine, which used advanced technology to study the broadcasts from the Australian Grand Prix, Button's victory was worth about £8million in television advertising time to Virgin. SportsPro says that Virgin would have to spend that amount, including about £350,000 in Britain, to garner the 42 minutes of exclusive screen time that the Virgin name won as Button's car circulated the Melbourne track. It would have been worth even more had there been time to embroider the overalls of Button and Rubens Barrichello, his team-mate, who was second, with the Virgin logo before they leapt on to the podium.

With the betting that Brawn GP could dominate the Malaysian Grand Prix on Sunday, more sponsors want to get involved. Fry said that many of the approaches have been from British household names keen to maintain the national link with the team based in Brackley, Northamptonshire. “People sense that this is a British team and they want to have that link,” he said. “There is no doubt that Jenson's victory has performed wonders for us. Apart from Virgin, we hope to have other companies on board as soon as we can.”

After the glory, though, came the pain, with redundancy notices handed out to 270 of the 700 staff in Brackley. Many, mostly volunteers, started to leave on Tuesday as the Brawn GP race team made their way from Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. Unlike the free-spending days of Honda, though, Brawn team members, headed by Ross Brawn, the new team principal and leading shareholder, turn right when they enter a plane.

Cost savings have started with economy travel instead of club class, with Fry implementing plans to reduce the team's budget from a peak of almost £300million under Honda to about £50million annually by the end of this year. The new venture is the sort of entrepreneurial business that was once the strength of Formula One, even though Honda is underwriting the team for this year to the tune of £100million.

But it has become clear that the long delay over selling the team last winter was because Honda had been scared of the “Stanford effect”. It seems many approaches were from alleged multimillionaires who, like Allen Stanford, were not as they seemed. Carlos Slim, the Mexican mobile phone billionaire, was one of the most touted buyers but he is under investigation by the Mexican antitrust authorities. Sources say that Honda was determined that it would not be embarrassed in the way that cricket was by a Stanford-style debacle, which is why Brawn and Fry were encouraged to mount a management buyout that could turn out to be one of the most successful decisions in sport.

[Mansell_UK]

As if Brawn GP's performance in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix wasn't already cause for concern for the rest of the Formula One pack, the Brackley outfit have the following warning to their rivals: "We have a little bit in the bag. We've got good stuff coming and we have reason to be confident.

WOW lol

Mansell_UK

[darwin dali]

Sportinglife.com:
Asked for his reaction the title could be his by the midway point, Brawn replied: "I'd like to think so, but you can never assume that.

"The rate of progress will be very rapid with the new regulations, and some people here have forgotten what happens when new rules are introduced.

"In 1994 I was at Benetton. We sacrificed 1993, and in '94 we won the world title.

"It was an anomaly because we were a small T-shirt manufacturer who won the world championship. People didn't like it. They can't adjust to that concept.

"Right now we've a long way to go and people will progress very rapidly this year.

"But we started this car 15 months ago and I think we're the only team that did that."

Brawn is anticipating considerable progress will be made by the major manufacturers ahead of the first European race in Spain in early May.

However, Brawn insists his own team will not be standing still either, even if they lack the budget of old when they were Honda Racing, and in light of making 270 staff redundant.

The problem he faces is developing the current car, which could be a championship winner, and looking ahead to next season's car when more new rules come into force.

"We've all seen each other's cars now, and we understand what other people are doing," added Brawn.

"So we've got to try and keep moving forward as well. We've got an upgrade for Barcelona which looks quite good, and there will be two or three different steps during the year.

"But then we've some different regulations next year as well. The 2010 regulations are quite different, with no refuelling and we've got to start the 2010 car quite soon.

"It's certainly not going to be easy at any stage, but we've got things happening to try and ensure that we stay competitive."

[texasmr2]

Go BrawnGP!!!!!!!!!