£40 Million F1 Cap Bodes Well for Brawn GP

I don’t know about you lot, but amongst the utter joy at Brawn’s success this year, I have been worrying about next season!  

Can Brawn afford to race in 2010? And will they have the funds to be competitive? 

My fears have, to an extent been answered by the introduction of a £40 million budget cap for 2010, which has come as good news for private teams such as Brawn GP and worried fanatics like me!

Apparently, the teams that comply will get more technical freedom (good news for Ross’s boys!) and unlimited out-of-season testing (good news for Alex Wurz, or Ant Davidson, or whoever wears the Brawn test suit!).

So if Brawn comply with the new rules (which I’m sure they’ll have to) they will be allowed to use movable front and rear wings and an engine not subject to a rev limit.

Personally, I think the ban on refuelling during races, to save on costs of transporting refuelling equipment will take away some of the strategy element to F1 (which I think is a bad thing).

From a Brawn perspective, I think the team has really benefited strategically from the leadership of Ross Brawn.  If that is taken away, I think F1 will be losing an important part of its identity.

I’m really not sure whether this rule change would make the racing any better, either.  I would also argue that, though it will save money, won’t it make more F1 pit staff redundant?  

This price cap news has nicely coincided with the positive news that Richard Branson seems to have made Brawn GP an offer to become their main title sponsor.  

As you’ll no doubt remember, Branson began to hint involvement in the ex-Honda outfit before the team was re-launched as Brawn GP.  He officially joined forces with the team at the Australian Grand Prix.  

However, at that stage nothing was certain and both parties were like nervous kids on a first date.

Ross was saying that he liked Virgin and hopped they would commit a little bit more for the future, and Virgin was being just as vague stating that they liked Brawn…and they’d have to see what would happen.

It is my understanding that Branson has made an offer that he believes to be fair, but has said that if anyone makes Brawn a better offer, the Virgin group will gracefully bow out.  

Frankly, I don’t know if that means anything.  What I can tell you is that the following are proud sponsors of Brawn GP:

Ray-Ban (lovely American sunglasses) have continued their sponsorship, which began back in the days of Honda.  The company have sponsored Honda for the past six years and I must say I really love the Ray-Ban logo (hopefully we’ll see it on the car again one day).

Swiss FX Broker, MIG investments (foreign exchange company) has agreed a three-year deal with the Brackley-based outfit.  It’s logo can be seen on the sides of the front wing and on the nose of the BGP001.

Henri Lloyd (expensive, but nice clothing range) joined Brawn almost on its re-launch. All of the teams official clothes are manufactured by the company and the logo can be seen on the side of the car. 

As for the Virgin question, well I just wish the Brawn marketing people would let us know a bit more! Remember when there were 12 parties interested in buying out Honda? How many parties are there in the race for title sponsor?

I guess we’ll find out in good time.  Anyway the good news for we Brawn fans is that hopefully the team we have supported for such a long time (granted as Honda first) will be racing next year; maybe emblazoned with Virgin…maybe not!?