By Alan Baldwin
LONDON (Reuters) – Ross Brawn was famously calm on the Formula One pitwall, a reassuringly steady figure in a fast-moving sport, but a new docu-series charting his team’s fairytale 2009 title success has brought out some raw emotions.
Underdogs Brawn GP and Jenson Button won six of the first seven races and both championships after a season of drama on and off the track that threatened the team’s survival at several points.
The story has now been re-told in a four-part series ‘Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story’ on Disney+, with Hollywood A-lister Keanu Reeves the host and narrator.
Due for release in Britain on Wednesday, it features hitherto unseen archive footage and unbroadcast radio messages.
“What occurred to me watching the series was the great highlights but also the sinking feeling,” Brawn, the former Ferrari technical director, ex-Honda and Mercedes team boss who later became Formula One’s managing director, told Reuters in a video interview.
“The awful feeling in the pit of your stomach when I was attending those protest meetings and having to go to the stewards and persuade them the car was legal and having to deal with the court hearings in Paris, not knowing what was going to happen, any of which could have sunk the team.
“Those were the things for me that kind of came home again watching the series. There was definitely a tear in my eye towards the end.
“I almost re-lived the despair of those events.”
Brawn, now 68, had acquired the team for a pound from Honda after the Japanese manufacturer hurriedly pulled out at the end of the 2008 season.
They had no engine to power the car until Mercedes, with the help of then-McLaren team boss Martin Whitmarsh, came to the rescue.
The story from then on is part of Formula One lore — the radical car dropping jaws across the paddock with its speed when it belatedly hit the track in testing with a loophole-busting double-diffuser.
Despite a bare budget, whittled-down staff and scarcely enough spares to get through the opening races, Brawn wrote one of sport’s great stories of triumph in adversity.
In 2010, Mercedes bought the team and went on to win eight constructors’ titles in a row and take Lewis Hamilton to six of his seven crowns.
“We had that wonderful period at the beginning (of 2009) when everyone assumed it was a slam dunk, you know? But we were like a swan. We were serene on the top, but underneath we were paddling like hell,” recalled Brawn.
The former boss still marvels at the team and Button’s resilience under pressure as big-spending rivals caught up.
“What I find fascinating and really entertaining about the documentary is how open he (Button) is about the challenges that he met during the season,” he said.
“And I could see it, and I could talk to him, but I couldn’t help him.”
Strict budget caps have made it tougher for others to overturn early season domination while the soaring success of the sport, with some big teams now valued at more than $1 billion, also serves as a barrier to new entries.
Michael Andretti, with one of the most storied surnames in motorsport and the backing of General Motors plus the support of the governing FIA and a $200 million payment to be shared by rival teams, is still waiting for a green light.
Brawn, a Formula One employee, avoided comment on that situation with the steady hand of a man who has steered his own ship through far choppier waters.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Christian Radnedge)
