Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Brawn joins Honda

Honda F1 has announced the signing of Ross Brawn as their newly hired Team Principal, responsible for the Day to Day operations of the team, while current Team Boss Nick Fry will stay on as CEO. Fry will now concentrate upon the commercial side of the team, leaving Brawn in charge of turning the team into a championship challenger.

Brawn, who’s spent the past year on “Fishing Sabbatical,” was long rumoured to be seeking a new role at Ferrari where he oversaw Michael Schumacher’s Grand Prix dominance. As Technical Director of both Benetton and Ferrari, Brawn was instrumental in all seven of Schuey’s titles and was part of the “Brain Trust” that followed the German’s move to the Prancing Horse in 1996.

Interestingly Brawn has been out of the spotlight the entire year except for serving as a witness in the “Stepney-Gate” proceedings, as Nigel Stepney had originally hoped to entice Brawn to join him while he was in possession of the 780 pages of documents that ultimately winded up in Mike Coughlin’s hands.

Brawn will begin his tenure at Honda on November 26, planning to work with the current staff on hand and will report directly to Fry.