Image via Lotus

The legendary Ford Cosworth DFV (Double Four Valve) V8 engine is, by a mile, the most successful F1 racing engine of all time.

Cosworth was founded in 1958 by Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth to build racing engines. They started by making versions of the Ford Kent engine for use in Formula Junior but the DFV story began when new 3-litre regulations were written for F1 beginning in 1966.

Lotus boss Colin Chapman persuaded Ford’s Walter Hayes to bankroll Cosworth’s V8 development programme to the tune of £100,000 and the engine made a winning debut at the ’67 Dutch GP at Zandvoort in Jim Clark’s hands. It changed the face of F1 and, said Ken Tyrrell, was the reason the sport developed in the way that it did.

Ken wasn’t involved in F1 in ’67 but was weighing it up and became an instant DFV fan when he was flown out to that Dutch race. “It was clear that the DFV was the only engine in the race,” Tyrrell said. “Everything else was old-fashioned rubbish. You had to have one.”

Chapman fought tooth and nail to retain Cosworth’s exclusive use for Lotus but that, of course, made no commercial sense to Cosworth, or Ford, and it was a battle Chapman lost. The engine was made available to anyone who happened to drive to Cosworth’s Northampton base with a cheque for £7500 in his pocket.

“You could come away with an engine that would win you the next Grand Prix in the right hands, which was fantastic,” said Tyrrell.

The engine was introduced too late in 1967 to stop Denny Hulme winning the championship with his Brabham-Repco but from 1968 to 1982 inclusive, the DFV would be responsible for 12 of the next 15 world champions! From Clark’s Zandvoort win until 1983, when Michele Alboreto’s Tyrrell scored the DFV’s last success in Detroit, the engine won 155 grands prix.

The championship success story over those 15 years reads like a roll call of the great and the good of the sport. Graham Hill (’68), Jackie Stewart (’69) Jochen Rindt, posthumously (’70), Stewart (’71), Emerson Fittipaldi (’72), Stewart (’73), Fittipaldi (’74), James Hunt (’76), Mario Andretti (’78), Alan Jones (’80), Nelson Piquet (’81), Keke Rosberg (’82).

Fascinating BBC footage of a DFV assembly below

Click here to view the embedded video.

As for the constructors, in order, they were: Lotus, Matra, Lotus, Tyrrell, Lotus, Tyrrell, McLaren, McLaren, Lotus, Williams, Brabham, Williams. The only engine to spoil the party and avert a clean sweep of the entire 15 years was Ferrari’ flat-12 that took Niki Lauda to world titles in 1975–7 and Jody Scheckter to the crown in 1979.

Many times the doom mongers forecast the end of the road for the DFV. For some, it was as early as 1970 when Jacky Ickx’s Ferrari proved quicker than Rindt’s Lotus at certain venues. Lauda’s success in the mid seventies, which would have been a hat-trick but for his fiery shunt at Nurburgring in ’76, again had so-called experts stating that a 12-cylinder was de rigueur.

Image via Ford

They might have been right had it not been for Lotus pioneering the use of ground effect. To maximise impressive downforce generated by venturi tunnels in each sidepod, you needed a narrow engine and suddenly the 90-degree Ford Cosworth V8 was a much better bet than the wider flat-12 Ferrari.

Scheckter’s ’79 triumph for Ferrari was, as much as anything, the result of a strong start, a strange best four from each half of the season championship scoring system that year and the late introduction of the superb Williams FW07, which exploited the ground effects phenomenon even better than Chapman’s Lotuses.

Renault, meanwhile, had arrived in F1 in 1977 with a turbocharged 1.5-litre V6, the equivalency formula back then. Duckworth was scathing about turbos, not considering them ‘proper’ engines but the writing was on the wall and in 1983, the year Alboreto scored that last DFV win, Nelson Piquet won the first turbocharged world title with a Brabham-BMW, pipping Alain Prost’s Renault at
the very last race.

When Cosworth started his company, he said: “We thought it must be possible to make an interesting living messing about with racing cars and engines…” With Ford’s support, he certainly wasn’t wrong!

If ever there was a 24 carat hall of famer, it’s Mario Andretti. Pulled over in the UK, it’s, “who do you think you are, Stirling Moss?” But for the Smokies in the USA, it’s always Mario.

On the US scene, NASCAR is King, more so now than ever. Thundering stock cars on ovals with constant contact, drafting, passing and re-passing, is what American audiences seem to want. In days gone by, Indycar racing was almost as strong and the Indy 500 drew crowds of 400,000. Road racing never caught on to the same extent. Whatever it was didn’t matter to Mario. If it had wheels, he’d race it.

Andretti is renowned as the most versatile driver there has ever been. He arrived in the USA in the fifties, the teenage son of Italian immigrant parents with two hundred and fifty bucks to their name. Inspired by watching Alberto Ascari in the Mille Miglia, he soon discovered a dirt oval close to home in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, and started racing.

He had Ferrari in his blood. “While I was driving my jalopy stock cars I was thinking about Ferrari,” he says. And even in ’63 when, as a 23-year-old, he won three sprint car feature races on the same day, he was thinking about Dan Gurney in F1.

Mario met Lotus boss Colin Chapman at Indianapolis, mentioned F1 and when he was given a Lotus 49 for the ’68 US GP at Watkins Glen, he put it on pole. In his first Grand Prix for Ferrari, in 1971, he won the South African GP.

A racer with a name like Mario had but one destiny

Andretti won in F1, Indycars, the World Sportscar Championship and NASCAR. He took four Indycar titles and won the F1 world championship in 1978 in Chapman’s fabulous ground effect Lotus 79. He claimed the Indy 500 in 1969.

Amazingly, when Andretti scored his last Indycar win in 1993, it meant that he had won Indy races in four different decades, finishing up with 52 wins and 66 pole positions from 407 starts!

But it was Andretti’s personality, aura and eminent quotability that made him such a star. As the last American to win a grand prix, at Zandvoort in ’78, it was a year earlier, after a collision trying to overtake reigning champion James Hunt, that Mario memorably vented his feelings.

“He says you don’t overtake on the outside in F1? Well I got news for him. If he blocks me on the inside, I’m gonna try the outside. James Hunt is champion of the world, right? Problem is, he thinks he’s King of the goddam world as well… What’s he want me to do – pick my nose and follow the King?” No F1 corporate speak back then…

Watch Andretti sweep round the outside in his signature move around 2’40″

Click here to view the embedded video.

After three difficult F1 seasons with Lotus and Alfa Romeo following his championship success, Andretti returned to the USA to run a full Indycar programme in 1982. But when Ferrari drivers Gilles Villeneuve and Didier Pironi suffered fatal/career-ending accidents respectively that same year, Andretti got the call to race for Old Man Ferrari once again, at Monza.

“You don’t turn it down, do you?” he said and, at the age of 42, put the car on pole and finished third. He still speaks with awe of the power of those turbos with qualifying boost – well over 1000bhp. “Like sitting on top of dynamite,” he remembers. “Man, I had wheelspin in fifth between the Lesmos…”

Once a racer, always a racer. But has there been a racer like Mario?

Jackie Stewart shot to prominence when he won the 1969 world championship in a French-built Matra MS80 run by Ken Tyrrell.

Stewart, with his long hair, corduroy cap and shades, was more Beatle than racing driver and became an icon as the Swinging Sixties morphed into the seventies.

Stewart had lost a three-way final round ’68 title shoot-out in Mexico but there was no stopping him in ‘69. The championship was played out over just 11 rounds back then and Jackie started with a win at Kyalami in South Africa.

After a two month gap he was fortunate to win Spain, which was notable for spectacular accidents to Lotus drivers Graham Hill and Jochen Rindt when the high aerofoil rear wings that were starting to proliferate in F1, broke under load. They were banned from the next race on, in Monte Carlo. Stewart led Monaco from pole position and set fastest lap, but the Matra retired and Hill won.

Stewart made himself all but unbeatable when he scored a hat-trick of wins at the Dutch, French and British Grands Prix. He got a fright at Silverstone, however, when a bit of loose kerbing at Woodcote corner punctured a tyre and put him off at 150mph in practice. He took over team mate Jean-Pierre Beltoise’s car for the race, while the Frenchman was shunted across into the recalcitrant four-wheel-drive Matra MS84 spare car. Later that season in Canada, the car became the only 4WD to score an F1 championship point, albeit six laps down in Johnny Servoz-Gavin’s hands in Canada!

Stewart fought an epic Silverstone battle with friend and chief foe Rindt, until the Austrian was slowed by a car problem. At Monza in September, Stewart took his sixth win of the season and clinched his first world title in what is still the closest four-car blanket finish in F1 history.

Pre-chicane Monza was famous for its slipstreaming battles and Stewart deliberately took a long fourth gear ratio so that he did not have to change gear between the exit of Parabolica and the finish line on the last lap. He came out of Parabolica second to Rindt’s Lotus but was ahead by eight hundredths as they flashed across the line, with less than 0.2s covering Stewart, Rindt, Jean-Pierre Beltoise and Bruce McLaren.

Shaky footage below of an incredible last few corners at Monza

Click here to view the embedded video.

Already, Stewart was active on the safety front which, as well as his then-record 27 victories and three world titles, would be one of the enduring legacies he left behind when he retired in ‘73. Trapped in a BRM leaking fuel at Spa in ’66, Stewart was appalled by the lack of marshalling professionalism and then the makeshift medical facilities with cigarette butts all over the floor.

That ’69 season saw Spa boycotted after a circuit inspection by Stewart. New Armco barriers would be installed before the race, one of the most dangerous on the calendar, returned in 1970. At the time, Jackie’s safety stand opened him to ridicule although, quietly, all his contemporaries were behind him. That first world title in ’69 increased his worldwide profile massively and gave him the platform from which he became one of the sport’s most influential figures.

Great home movie footage below of the British GP of that amazing season

Click here to view the embedded video.

There’s been a lot of stuff written about Le Mans, Steve McQueen’s 1971 classic portrayal of endurance racing. Sure, it was a brilliantly gritty portrayal of the scene and featured the Coolest Man in the World. But for us, Jon Frankenheimer’s 1966 feature Grand Prix does all the things that Le Mans does, but slightly better and with an understated style.

Click here to view the embedded video.

With a budget of around nine million dollars and some of the most incredible action photography ever shot: the film’s look and feel was augmented by maestro of the title sequence Saul Bass. And though the plot line and the acting, even from non-professional driving stars like James Garner is fundamentally hokey — it matters little.

Because what you’re really watching this movie for three other things: the brilliant titles and graphic montages; the power and the glory of the action sequences; and last but no means least, the beautiful, ear-splitting sound.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Though Bass failed to be rewarded for his title sequences, the movie did pick up the Oscar gongs for Best Film Editing, Best Sound and Best Sound Effects. But curiously, despite its widespread success and obvious visual and aural quality, it remains a relatively obscure classic.

Featuring many of the leading drivers of the year’s GP roster, including Graham Hill, Phil Hill, Jim Clark and John Surtees, what the film manages to capture is the grease thick danger and adrenalin of Formula 1 during this era.

And the sequence that features the Spa-Francorchamps circuit (below), is the greatest I have ever seen. This sort of quality footage would be almost impossible to achieve with all the digital tech available today.

Enjoy and marvel at how this was achieved. In glorious celluloid.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In 1966, 3-litre normally aspirated engine regulations were introduced to F1 with a 1.5-litre equivalency formula for anyone wanting to run a turbo instead. Nobody did. Until, that is, a decade later.

The British Grand Prix of 1977 saw two highly significant debuts. One was Gilles Villeneuve in a McLaren, and the second was the 1.5-litre V6 turbo Renault with Jean-Pierre Jabouille at the wheel.
At first, nobody took the Renault too seriously. It blew up a lot and because brewing up could be more or less be relied upon, it earned itself a nickname of ‘The Teapot.’ Or, some said, ‘Teapot 2’ because the original Teapot had been a Ligier with a particularly tall and distinctive airbox.

By the time a couple of seasons had gone by, the Renault was being taken very seriously indeed. Jabouille scored the first turbocharged win by an F1 car, fittingly enough in the French GP at Dijon in ‘79. But even that race was better known for its epic tussle for second place between Gilles Villeneuve’s Ferrari and Rene Arnoux aboard the second Renault turbo.

Arnoux was using the better top speed of the Renault and Villeneuve the better drivability of the naturally-aspirated flat-12 Ferrari. They banged wheel repeatedly and went off everywhere until Villeneuve crossed the line ahead.

“Irresponsible!” bellowed the Puritans. “Nothing to worry about, just a couple of young lions clawing each other…” reckoned laconic ’78 world champ Mario Andretti.

Running more boost in qualifying, the Renaults were always at the front of the grid and when they started to develop reliability too, the writing was on the wall. The opposition realised that turbos were the only way to go and it effectively spelled the end of the road for the legendary Ford Cosworth DFV (below).

It wasn’t Renault, though, who claimed the first world championship success for a turbocharged car. That honour fell to Bernie Ecclestone’s Brabham team with its four cylinder BMW turbo, which snatched the championship from under Alain Prost nose at the very last race of 1983 in South Africa.

Turbos dominated F1 for the next five years with Niki Lauda and Alain Prost claiming a hat-trick of titles for McLaren with a TAG-Porsche V6 between 1984–6. Prost won that ’86 title in dramatic fashion when Nigel Mansell suffered a dramatic tyre blowout just 18 laps short of winning the title with his Williams-Honda in Adelaide.
Nelson Piquet made amends the following season for Williams-Honda before Ayrton Senna took the first of his three world titles in a McLaren-Honda in ‘88.

By the mid eighties turbo engine development saw stratospheric horsepower figures derived from the 1.5-litre motors – as much as 1500bhp in qualifying trim, where every gearshift sounded like a detonating grenade and produced a dark haze behind each car. Costs were spiralling out of control and for ’89 the FIA banned turbos and introduced a new engine class for 3.5-litre normally aspirated power units.

Today’s F1 engines are 2.4-litre V8s but the governing body is busy drafting regulations for a new small capacity turbo formula to be introduced in 2013 along with more powerful regenerative systems.

The thinking behind it is threefold; being seen to be green, capping spending as much as possible and having more direct relevance to the motor industry.

Cosworth Group’s chief executive Tim Routsis has been part of the ongoing discussions and says: “The big difference this time will be the amount of fuel we can pour into the engine over a race. In terms of efficiency, the differences have to be marked. We are looking at using somewhere between 35 and 50% less fuel than we are using today for a car that’s got to do fundamentally the same sort of lap time and distance, so it’s a big change.”
There’s concern about a couple of things: preventing a financial arms race and, in terms of fan appeal, making sure the turbos still sound good.

“As regards the spending, one route is to constrain areas where we know you can spend a great deal of money for very little gain and just keep the development focused on areas which are relevant to the future,” Routsis says. “The other is to look at the amount of resource that each engine manufacturer deploys on the job. It’s very much work in progress but everyone is committed to finding an answer.

“As for the sound, a turbocharged engine will always be a little quieter than a naturally aspirated one running open pipes. But I’ve never seen a really good racing engine that sounded bad. I think we’re going to find the old story that if it goes fast, it’ll sound great. There are things we can do as well. Playing around with firing order does actually make a remarkable difference but if we are going to have less cylinders the amount that you can actually play with that is reduced. But I don’t think they’ll sound bad. They’re still going to be pretty high-revving by any normal standards.”

So there you have it. Coming soon, to a circuit near you – Turbos 2!

When it comes to environmental issues Formula 1 is not exactly ‘on message.’ A Grand Prix car is a high-revving, incredibly noisy projectile and its sole purpose is to go quickly. Not, as yet, to go quickly economically. It’s a wholly anti-social animal if that’s the way you want to see it.

Life changes and with even Australians lamenting the ‘Nanny state’, is Formula 1 at risk of falling victim to an argument that, like boxing, it belongs to a bygone age? Is it harmful, socially unacceptable and ultimately heading for a ban?

As Frank Williams said recently, while discussing the reintroduction of KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems), “F1 needs a totem. KERS is a very meaningful thing for emissions control, it does save power. It’s expensive, it’s difficult technology and a big swallow, but sooner or later F1 is going to get aggro from one of these bodies that causes aggro…”

That is something that former FIA president Max Mosley concluded some time ago. He realised the need for F1 to be seen to be as green as possible, which is why he wanted to introduce KERS, reduce engine capacities and curb spending which, across F1’s manufacturers, had reached a billion dollars annually.

Suddenly, instead of being a global advertising platform irresistible to companies such as Honda, Toyota and Renault as well as premium brands like Ferrari, Mercedes and BMW, F1 found all the rats deserting a sinking ship. In quick succession, Honda, Toyota and BMW all left and Renault, you suspect, might have followed suit had it not been for its involvement in the Singapore ‘Crashgate’ saga. Instead, it sold 75% of the shareholding in its F1 operation.

The driving force behind this was not the environment itself, so much as the financial environment — the credit crunch. With sales figures catastrophic and redundancies and reduced working weeks a reality, it became ever more politically difficult for manufacturers to justify money spent on an F1 programme. And it wasn’t just car manufacturers. Bookings for F1’s Paddock Club (where corporate guests are entertained lavishly at considerable expense) nosedived too. Suddenly it wasn’t very PC for the likes of RBS to be seen to be glad-handing lavishly while worldwide economies went bust.

But what the credit crunch has also done is accelerate a change in advertising emphasis. Look at car advertising now, even for the likes of BMW, and it’s not performance oriented anymore. It’s all about frugality and pleasant experiences. Drives in the country, things like that.

Look at the tyre manufacturers too. Bridgestone has used F1 to great effect as a brand building exercise but recently announced its withdrawal. Why? Not, whatever it might say, because of cost. It’s F1 spend relative to its profit is insignificant. It’s because the head honcho is behind a ‘green’ marketing strategy and has a problem squaring that with Formula 1.

Michelin has recently signalled interest in a return to the F1 arena it left in 2006. But, significantly, it wants to be able to demonstrate the energy efficiency of its tyres. Only recently, leading Autosport F1 journalist Mark Hughes has been writing about the possibility of linking a tyre’s rolling resistance with permitted fuel density. His suggestion is, the lower the rolling resistance of your tyres, the denser your fuel is allowed to be, allowing you to carry more fuel energy for less weight and go quicker. He advocates getting the tyre and fuel companies working hand-in-glove to improve efficiency across the board.

Thus far, F1 and eco-friendliness have been no more than nodding acquaintances. It was deeply ironic that having introduced KERS, F1 failed to make it compulsory. The likes of Ferrari, McLaren and Renault spent serious money developing KERS systems for 2009 (McLaren-Mercedes is reckoned to have spent £50 million) only to see Red Bull and Brawn decide that the effects of a KERS system on chassis bulk outweighed its advantages, and blow them into the weeds!

Frank Williams is probably right. Sooner or later F1 will flag up on someone’s radar and it’s ‘need to be green’ may have to be more than a token gesture.

There’s many that are claimed to be the greatest British driver who ever lived. It’s a tough competition.

Jackie Stewart might have been the most pugnacious whilst Sir Sterling Moss might have been the most preternaturally talented. Nigel Mansell could well have been the most tenacious and workmanlike. James Hunt, on the other hand might have been the most playboy-like and fragrant. Lewis Hamilton, however, might turn out to be the most successful.

We know who was the most stylish. Jim Clark.

Superb vintage onboard footage below with the great Raymond Baxter commentating, and a fine representation of his sculpted features above.

Who is your favourite Brit driving legend?

There were seismic changes to Formula 1 in 2009.

Bickering over the sport’s financial arrangements and governance led to FOTA (the Formula One Teams Association) announcing a breakaway championship at the British GP at Silverstone in June, then back-tracking once it became evident that Max Mosley’s reign as FISA/FIA president was truly over and that he would not stand for re-election in October’s election.

Despite the FOTA U-turn the fact is that in the last 12 months Formula 1 has witnessed the withdrawal of manufacturer entries from Honda, BMW and Toyota. And, at the time of writing, Renault is considering bids for its Enstone-based operation that was taken over from Benetton at the start of the decade.

Whether the desertions are purely the result of a catastrophic economic situation for the motor industry or more deeply entrenched dissatisfaction over the sport’s governance, is a moot point. Mosley certainly believed that Formula 1 was unviable in the current climate if it basically amounted to a spending contest.

Max argued that manufacturers have always used F1 for their own promotional purposes while it suited, but always follow their own agendas. To safeguard the sport, he said, it needed to be viable for commercially-funded private entrants. Events of the past few months seem to have vindicated his assessment. We have returned to a position of multiple private entrant ‘purist’ racing teams, plus Ferrari and Mercedes.

Back in the seventies, eighties and early nineties, that was basically the sport’s composition. Largely British private teams such as Lotus, Tyrrell, Brabham, McLaren and then Williams dominated with off-the-shelf Cosworth engines. Opposition came from Ferrari, Alfa Romeo and Matra, then came Renault, BMW, TAG-Porsche and Honda as the turbo era dawned.

As Bernie Ecclestone’s vision developed Formula 1 into a world class global sport with unsurpassed reach – the Olympics and the soccer World Cup generate bigger audiences but only once every four years – it became an irresistible promotional platform for the world’s motor manufacturers. Mercedes, BMW, Jaguar, Ferrari, Honda, Toyota, Renault were all there at the same time – unprecedented for the sport.

For some, participation was enough to increase brand awareness but, for others, winning was essential. And they couldn’t all win. Team staffing levels approached four figures and budgets went through the roof. Collectively, the manufacturers were spending a billion dollars a year on engine development alone. Mosley, a man who witnessed the off-the-shelf Cosworth era first hand with his March company, thought it was both bonkers and unsustainable.

Suddenly the independents, including top class outfits like Williams, were struggling to be viable businesses without major manufacturer backing. And, whereas Max and Bernie had been able to control the privateers, often by divide and rule tactics, the presence of heavily backed corporate players threatened to take the sport out of their control. Politics started to dominate sport.

On the plus side, interest grew and competition became closer than ever. In 2009 we enjoyed entire grids covered by little more than one second — unthinkable just a decade ago.

On paper, all the factors that made F1 so attractive to the manufacturers still remain, albeit that as things stand you can’t go out and beat six or seven of your major rivals. The interesting time will come when the economy turns. We will see how many return. The regulatory path followed by new FIA president Jean Todt will also be influential, along with his success or failure in implementing a planned glide path of reduced expenditure aimed at reaching early nineties levels. Many have serious doubts about the viability of such a target.

The immediate future gives rise to some mouth-watering match-ups on track. None is quite so compelling as the prospect of Britain’s back-to-back champions, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button, lining up as team mates in identical McLarens.

Button’s talks with McLaren were initially viewed as expedient for both parties – McLaren was surely turning the screw on Kimi Raikkonen’s negotiating team and Button was trying to eke out a bigger pay day from Brawn and Mercedes. Nobody quite believed it when the deal went through.

Some suspect that Button, with the pressure finally off, took temporary leave of his senses. To head into a McLaren environment where Lewis has been king for three years and take him on – is a big ask. Fernando Alonso couldn’t do it when Lewis was a rookie never mind a world champion.

While it’s fair to say that many don’t rate Jenson’s chances too highly, it’s not as simple as all that. Button started ’09 with an undoubted car advantage due to Brawn’s double diffuser and long development lead time. By the end of the season the team had been caught and arguably overtaken. McLaren initially didn’t cope with the new aero regulations but once it solved its problems became a potent force.

Jean Todt’ puckish of genius when running the Scuderia will be applied to the FIA

Next year with refuelling banned, it will become vitally important to look after your tyres, the rears particularly, over a race distance. That may play right into the hands of Button’s super-smooth style which is likely to take less out of the rubber that Hamilton’s more flamboyant oversteer-pronounced technique. On the other side of the coin, the change in handling characteristics over a race distance is more likely to favour the more adaptable driver, which is likely to be Hamilton. It will be fascinating to see how it pans out, not to mention whether or not McLaren can keep a lid on the potential tensions of two star drivers again – something it patently failed to do with Senna/Prost and Alonso/Hamilton.

The other great plus is that the future of the British Grand Prix seems assured after Bernie Ecclestone signed a recent 17-year deal with Silverstone following the collapse of Donington’s ambitious plan – another victim of the economic situation.

With potential EU competition issues clouding F1 rights ownership issues at the start of the decade, it was no surprise that F1’s new super-venues: Sepang, Shanghai, Istanbul, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi and, next year, South Korea, were all outside Europe. Now though, with those issues apparently resolved by the FIA divesting itself of the commercial rights, we’ve had Valencia and the new deal for Silverstone. That at least, is a blessing. While the new locations are spectacular – witness Yas Marina in particular – they must always be balanced with F1’s traditional core events.

In case you have been cast into a particularly opaque motorsport limbo this last week, you will know that Ross Brawn, 55 in November, has pulled off a stunning achievement. The team he created out of the ashes of Honda’s withdrawal from Formula One has executed a stunning double victory in the drivers’ and constructors’ world championship.

But Brawn, by his own admission, is not a hands-on design ace, sketching out ideas on the back of fag packets or waking up during the night with that ‘lightbulb’ idea. That, he admits, is more his rival Adrian Newey, whose Red Bull RB5 has made such a fight of the second half of this season’s championship. Ross is renowned for his depth of experience and his man management expertise.

“Sometimes,” he says, “Very good people can be worried about the competitiveness of the racing environment, worried about making a mistake or getting something wrong. What I try to do is put people in the right places, give them the benefit of my experience, encourage them to perform and hopefully bring the best out of them. I’ve worked with some very good teams in my career and this Brawn team is one of the best.”

Brawn’s first racing role was with the March team in 1976. He joined Williams two years later and worked everything from a milling machine to a wind tunnel. After design jobs with both the Haas Lola and Arrows teams, he was recruited by Jaguar and brought F1 technology to the superb Jaguar XJR14 which won the world sportscar championship in 1991. Tom Walkinshaw then took him to Benetton as technical director, where he masterminded back-to-back world championships for Michael Schumacher in 1994–5.

When Schumacher left for Ferrari he took Ross with him and over the next decade, under Jean Todt’s management and Brawn’s technical leadership, Ferrari dominated Formula 1 in a manner never witnessed before. Brawn earned a reputation as a demon race strategist, but modestly says, ‘I think you’ve got a bit more flexibility when you’ve got Michael in the cockpit!’

After working in such an intense environment for so long, Brawn needed a sabbatical and spent 2007 indulging one of his other great passions – fishing. When he returned to the F1 fray it was as team principal of Honda.

But then Honda dropped a bombshell. Amid the credit crunch, with car sales plummeting and factory closures, it withdrew from F1. Brawn, if not quite kicking and screaming, was led somewhat reluctantly into the realms of team ownership. It was, he says, never an ambition to have his name above the door but a management buyout was the only viable way to save 700 plus jobs at Honda F1’s Brackley HQ.

Experts estimated it would have cost Honda $100 million plus in redundancies to close the team and so, instead, the Japanese allowed Brawn to take it off their hands and provided part of an operating budget for the first year.

[Show as slideshow]

On the one hand Brawn GP was a ‘new’ team. But on the other it was a highly competent group of people with huge resource via the investment Honda had already made.

Other factors helped. First, new aerodynamic regulations for 2009 were the most significant changes for 25 years. Second, Honda’s ‘08 season was such a dead loss that a line had been drawn under the development programme very early on, with all hands turning to the 09 project. Third, now without Honda’s engine, Brawn managed to secure the Mercedes Benz V8, widely held to be the best current unit in F1.

Crucially too, Brawn was one of just three of the 10 F1 teams to design its 2009 car around a ‘trick’ double diffuser, which generated more downforce than the opposition and got the team off to a flying start. Button won six of the first seven grands prix. It looked as if they could do no wrong. But, mid season, things started to go awry.

The opposition was now catching up with the double diffuser concept and Brawn itself suffered a performance drop-off due to an inability to generate tyre grip when track temperatures were lower. And Button suffered with it more than Barrichello. Team data proves that Barrichello’s more aggressive style generates more heat than Button’s ultra-smooth approach. What may become a disadvantage over a race distance when tyres need to be looked after, is a positive over a single qualifying lap. And, with overtaking as difficult as it is in F1, qualify too far down and your race day is terminally compromised.

That has largely been the story of the second half of Brawn’s season. Silverstone, Nurburgring and Spa were all affected by it. Normally, the more compliant a chassis and the kinder to its tyres, the better. And it will certainly be an advantage in 2010 when refueling is banned and a set of rubber has to last an entire race distance.

Going into the last two races of the season, Button needed just six points (one third place or two fifths) from the remaining two races to clinch the title. Despite that Honda foundation, the fact that he clinched the title before the final race constitutes a truly stunning achievement for Brawn.

The week the team got back from winning the first race in Melbourne, Ross had to lay-off 250 of his 700 staff. Brawn is located a stone’s throw from rivals Renault, Red Bull and Williams in motor racing’s equivalent of Silicon Valley. There is a pool of expertise but, suddenly, with cost-cutting the future, there were too many cooks. It was a stressful time for everyone.

The team’s achievements are a ringing endorsement to sound management. Not to mention the validation of Jenson Button as a truly first rate racing talent.

[Show as slideshow]