Friday, March 13th, 2009...3:05 pm
Honda is now Brawn GP and BGP001 Car is fast!
Yes, it finally happened - Ross Brawn the Chief Engineer maestro who emerged from Benetton and Ferrari to become Honda’s Technical Director has now bought out Honda’s F1 team. This has saved at least 400 jobs potentially as there will be a round of job cuts. In the meantime, this means Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello retain their drives in 2009. Although no sponsors are being displayed on their car, it looks like it won’t take long until their team starts winning sponsorship deals given the recent performance in testing.
Drivers like Felipe Massa, Robert Kubica and Fernando Alonso have all come forward to indeed concede the pace of BGP001 at the Barcelona test track is indeed real and that even if the runs were on low fuel and ballast removed, their cars simply couldn’t deliver that level of pace. Generally speaking it holds that any car that is fast in Barcelona is fast overall all is it rewards good aerodynamic efficiency and good tyre management. Estimates have put the Mercedes powerplant yielding an extra 70 Bhp over the Honda engine, just what the team needs.
Unfortunately, in amongst all of this Bruno Senna lost his drive for 2009 as Rubens Barrichello was retained to ensure car development continuity which would not be possible from a rookie. I hope we will see him in F1 sooner rather than later.
When you think about it, it makes sense, they have the technical leadership of Ross Brawn, they’ve designed the car since 2007 and now they could see the good times. Let’s hope they return and lets say a big boo to Honda. It will be a bitter pill to swallow if the Brawn GP team start qualifying slots, winning races, and perhaps even championships as it will be attributed to Ross Brawn and Mercedes and not Honda (despite their past investment).
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