How One Team Changed F1 FOREVER..

in 2008 the world changed forever the worst day on Wall Street we're now down 43% home prices were skyrocketing Leman Brothers is going bankrupt how low will it go the stock market the credit crunch has brought Formula 1 crashing back down Earth We're in the midst of a serious financial crisis chaos erupted in just about every part of Life as we know it today and eventually even our Billy in a boys club got affected especially Honda who was forced to cut costs in just about every Department all of a sudden their F1 team became a liability instead of an asset it had to go this is where brw GP enters the picture and in their first ever season they did The Impossible becoming the only team in F1 history to never lose a world championship this is the mindboggling and slightly controversial story of the team that changed Formula 1 [Music] forever usually teams who only compete for a single season are absolutely atrocious think life and Andrea but for this small ambitious British team it was the exact opposite they ended up smashing everyone's expectations including their own Jensen button proved his doubters wrong too I'll cover Jensen in more detail later but this is how the team came about in the first place I'm going to take you back a few years to the start of the Honda F1 Factory team it began in 2006 they had Jensen button and Ruben's barello driving for them and they had a crazy amount of money behind them but to be honest you wouldn't think it from watching them in action in 2006 the year after to taken over from bar they were actually quite fast scoring podiums and even giving button his first ever Formula 1 win but that was the highlight of their three years at Honda because after that they weren't exactly a front running team that's being kind actually they were terrible in 2007 they scored no podiums and their best finish was fifth at the Chinese GP 2008 wasn't much better barello scored their only podium in a crazy wet race it was looking pretty dismal for the Japanese Giants and it was about to get a lot worse with Honda being a Japanese company it impacted them harder than everyone else the stock market slide continue today Japan is a country built on Pride honor and respect and to their head honchos spending hundreds of millions of dollars on Motor Racing when the country and people are in a recession just didn't sit well so without much hesitation they decided to pull out of F1 in December of 2008 spiring cost and little success on the track means that if a deal isn't struck soon the whole team will be closed down with the loss of 800 British jobs just months before the 2009 season was due to begin this wasn't exactly great news for Formula 1 or Honda's hundreds of employees or Honda's drivers everyone knew that having a company like them in F1 was a massive deal but what if something even bigger could come from them [Music] leaving let's backtrack just a small bit first on the 12th of November 2007 Ross Brun was announced as the team principal of the Honda F1 team Ross Brawn the most successful technical director in recent years has joined Honda as team principal cross welcome the team he worked in that role for a year up until they decided to pull the plug anyway when he heard that they were selling it he had a crazy idea choices fight he wanted to buy it himself well it was mostly him because he rounded up a few other people to make his life easier are we going to fight yes are we going to fight Honda's Formula 1 team looks set to be rebranded in the new season Russ and his group brought the team and all of its assets and Russ now owned the majority 54% to be exact of an F1 team the team name Braun GP that was my marketing contribution the name the name the date the team was formed the 9th of March the first race of the 2009 season the 29th of March [Music] on a serious note though how much do you think Mr Ross paid for such an established F1 team if you know you know if you don't put your guess in the comments right now oh wait for braw and his boys buying the team wasn't an easy decision either a coin toss if you will it's one of the most famous parts of this last minute deal whatever your guess might have been I'm pretty confident to say it was wrong Honda sold their entire Formula 1 team for less than it was worth I mean way less than it was worth when we finally closed the deal I gave a pound to the Honda executive to formalize the deal one single Great British pound to put that into context mcclaren's racing CEO Zack Brown said recently that every F1 team is worth at least $1.3 billion us at the moment at the time though it wasn't an obvious decision it turned out that they were sort of both doing each other a favor Honda sold the team for1 as a legal requirement to sell the deal in return Ross and his group were taken on a lot of debt including the hundreds of employees who needed to get paid every month not easy when your pockets are already pretty tight in a way you persuaded Honda to change their minds and take this on board they would have spend $100 million to shut the company we said don't waste that money cuz then there's nothing left at least Hiroshi Oshima has something left though he was the Motorsports managing officer of Honda at the time and he still has the actual 1 pound coin that Ross gave him do you have the pound yes I want to check I want to see the pound that bought the team but if it looked like Ross got himself a pretty sweet deal at the time it was about to get a whole lot better the FIA was launching one of the biggest regulation changes in years the aim was to increase overtaking funny how they're still trying to do that 15 years later but that's the story for another video the o09 cars were going to have lower and wider front Wings narrower and higher rear wings and move to slick tires and most importantly have little to no Arrow Parts on the body workor these changes were supposed to reduce the amount of downfall so like always team started looking for other ways to get it back hold that thought because in 2008 Honda was having a nightmare weekend pretty much every weekend so they decided to start designing their o9 car early and when they did they came across something pretty unbelievable a guy called masayuki minagawa was an aerodynamicist for Honda and he discovered a loophole in the RS that changed everything he came up with the idea of adding a second diffuser to the rear crash structure of the car this idea turned into the famous double diffuser it was this device that turned out to not just be Braun gp's Lifeline but there golden ticket to the world championship I'm going to oversimplify it a lot but basically they made two holes in the floor of the car which fed more air into the second diffuser it created a crazy amount of downforce and controversy more on that later when the team did their simulations in the factory for the 2009 season they got a bit of a surprise and we couldn't understand where we'd gone wrong because our simulation showed we would be a second second half quicker Jo CLE engineer for Ruben's barello that year also said well you've clearly got your numbers wrong then haven't you duh you know as if we're going to be 2 seconds faster than everybody it looked like they made some huge mistakes already and didn't know what their expectations should be well testing testing testing mies it sound like braw did a lot of it but they really didn't their budget was so incredibly small they couldn't even afford to rent the full Silverstone track before their preseason Shakedown so they rented the Stow circuit instead which is basically half of silver showed up with their small tents and did a few laps it was pretty it was pretty much like camping and with that they were off to preseason testing by now they were cautiously optimistic they had a feeling their car was decent but you don't really know until you get the car on track and actually compare it to your Rivals when they arrived at preseason testing in Barcelona button smashed the best lap times straight away and I was like what it was hard for anyone to believe but you know what they say the stopwatch never lies and Braun GP found themselves with a genuinely outstanding in [Music] car however it turned out that Brawn wasn't the only team who had thought of the clever double diffuser Barcelona revealed that Toyota and Williams had some big brain moments too they had spotted the exact same loophole invented the double diffuser and developed their own versions aren't humans brilliant braw clearly had the best overall package though but Toyota and Williams had an instant boost in Pace from their double diffusers so like always in F1 it didn't take the other teams long to get upset did you already feel that they were going to protest the cars yeah they argued that the double diffuser was illegal and wanted it removed from the three teams cars but time is precious especially in F1 not just on track but off it too so even though the seven teams were protesting they were already at work in the background developing their own double diffuser in case their appeals were denied and that was definitely a good idea because as you probably guessed the first protest was unsuccessful and the double diffuser was declared legal on Thursday the 26th of March just 3 days before the first race in Australia all of us all the teams were aware there was something against the rules so the FIA said the car is fine and everybody else was saying they're [Music] cheating only one team in their debut race in the history of the sport have been able to get pole position and then go on to win it didn't make the other teams any happier when brwn won the season opening Australian Grand Prix Jensen buttons a winner again Braun GP are winners on their first race appearance and not only that it's a one-w finish this was the first time a team had finished onew on their debut since Mercedes in the 1954 French gr pre the whole weekend seemed more like a dream than reality the actual reality wasn't a complete dream for them though while they were winning on track they also announced that they were laying off over 350 employees but you knew what was going to happen in brankley it wasn't really jumping around with the joy cuz probably 50% of your colleagues wouldn't be there when you got back so even though they were on top of the world it wasn't all smooth sailing little did they know they were about to encounter one of the hardest challenges of their careers the protests from other teams kept on coming they went as far as the international court of appeal after the fourth race in Barra Formula 1 could be thrown into disarray as Championship leader Jensen button waits to hear whether his car is legal Ferrari call it illegal they went too far R have dominated the other teams say simply not fair is that a case of sour grapes appe court at the sports governing body is meeting now in Paris once you move to an appeal court you're being judged by a different group of people and that's the uncertainty to discuss whether the world championship leaders brwn team have broken the rules the car that British driver Jensen button race to victory has been approved by the sports governing body and by this point Jensen Button had won three of the first four races in fact Jensen went on to win six of the first seven races with a third place finish in the other it looked like nobody would be able to challenge him to the title but then this season took another dramatic Twist on the 21st of June when it all started to fall apart for Brawn it was Jensen's home race the British Grand Prix at silverston this is the one that I wanted to win so much you could hear the crowd you could see the crowd cheering and I think they just love the story but the car was nowhere near what it used to be J 7 Seconds down already what a shock for him two weeks ago he already got the lead really strug nice and the best he could do was just P6 will take four rber fifth and Jensen Buton sixth see halfway through this season Braun's lack of budget was really starting to show they had started the year with a massive advantage and held it for the first seven Races they weren't able to develop the car much though though and things started to change quickly the outcome of the entire Championship depended on one thing how quickly the big teams would be developing and implementing their own double diffusers and one team came out on top Red Bull they started giving brw a harder time in the second half of the season in the first seven races button won six in the final 10 he won zero as well as Sebastian vettle stealing three wins in the second half Jensen lost every bit of confidence he had in Formula 1 you're either giving pressure or you're taking PR Ria there's nothing in between coming out of Japan do you recall your mindset so I left Japan pretty down that's what I remember telling myself two races to go to hold on to this Championship that had been shrinking for months what are your thoughts on the last two races we are here to fight and obviously you know the best thing we can do is win this led to an unbelievable title fight with the points Gap at the top closing after almost every race even after the mid-season Resurgence by SE though it just wasn't enough to catch up Jensen and Brun won enough races in the first half of the season and built up such a huge points Gap that Red Bull simply ran out of time and brw won both the Constructor and Driver championships in a Monumental end to the [Music] season we should have been on finishes his lap 3 seconds slower than his teammates Brazil was was the last chance for Seb to win the championship at the moment he's down in 16th Sebastian vettle he's not improving he honestly believed he could still do it Jensen button 14th fastest dear me the only Championship Contender still in qualifying this would play very much into the hands of Ruben spak Sebastian just tell us how tough it was I think I went to the pool not to the racetrack today Ren bar knows the time to beat and he's done it are you kidding me the grand stand is alive and Ruben's bar delivers while Jensen Buton suffers my heart just sunk three contenders One mission he has to get P5 to secure the championship did you think he could do it did you even think about that this is going to changed me from being a racing driver and we're away in Brazil bar looking to get in there and leads well so Jensen button into the top 10 to a Formula 1 World Champion he's got a chance there but he's coming back up on the inside now can he do it button done G through nothing can stop me right now let's go let's go you have a cure Ruben it's got worst there for Ruben barell complete the spare on the brawn pit wall he started from po he hoped to win he's not even going to be on the podium now it would seem and it's drifting away from Ruben Bar's doing exactly what he needs to do fifth place it felt like the longest race in history J four laps to go four laps I don't need a this is a drive now to the championship for Jensen Buton and now here comes Jensen Buton the 2009 World Champion Rel look at the joy it's all now out in the [Applause] open you are the world champion it's really amazing and um after the last few face races I've had this one um makes up it that was just such an awesome race and um I'm world champion baby it blew us all away and it gave F1 a huge boost in popularity just 8 months earlier people would have laughed at you if you said they were going to win a race let alone take in both championships the late charge from Red Bull made it even sweeter and created an even more exciting season than it had been already but what was next the driver's Championship was clinched by button in Brazil they had been through unbelievable ups and downs and changed F1 history forever but after the next and final round of the year in Abu Dhabi Brun GP was no more the name Braun GP was no more anyway because they decided to sell and top of the list buyers was the company that supplied their engines Mercedes they bought it on the 16th of November 2009 and turned it into the Mercedes GP Factory team for the 2010 season it was a massive help for Mercedes to buy a team that already had a brilliant and highly developed car it's obviously a lot easier than starting a team from scratch and it didn't take too long for them to turn it into an even more competitive group they spent the remaining four years of the V8 era having varying levels of success but we all know what happened in 2014 when they introduced their rocket ship Hybrid engine and just as a reminder they won eight Constructor championships and seven drivers championships in a row it's not an exaggeration to say that Brun GP changed Formula 1 forever as I mentioned earlier they saved Honda from spending hundreds of millions of pounds to close the team and it's safe to say if Russ braw hadn't stepped up the era of Mercedes dominance more than likely wouldn't have happened [Music] seriously though just think about it for a second 2009 was Braun gp's first and last season ever they won both championships they're the only F1 team in history to literally never lose a season so next time someone asks you how Mercedes was so successful tell them about Brawn or Honda or if you want to go back even further tell them about tyell in 1968 but that's probably a story for another video but braw weren't the only ones to buy an existing F1 team we have Stewart Grand Prix which which turned into Red Bull Racing and I think we all know how that's going these Blockbuster teams all have one thing in common though they all had their go at dominating F1 classic stories about legendary drivers behind the scenes Antics and tales from the old days all go hand inand that's why I made a video on the most dominant teams in F1 history to answer the biggest question of them all what was truly the most dominating team/ driver of all time the answer might surprise you

Channel: DailyFuelUp

Views: 201,585

Keywords: DailyFuelUp, DFU, DFU Originals, Formula One, Formula 1, F1, Brawn, Brawn GP, 2009 F1 Season, Jenson Button, Rubens Barrichello, 2009 Formula 1 Season, Mercedes F1, Ross Brawn, Brawn F1, Brawn BGP 001, Double Diffuser, Story Of Brawn GP, Ross Brawn Documentary, Jenson Button 2009, Jenson Button Brawn, Brawn 2009

Id: 2Kakpu_-oyE

Length: 18min 29sec (1109 seconds)

Published: Sat May 11 2024