Brawn are no longer....

[zimbo]

Thats right folks, team Brawn are no longer!! As of next season they will be known as Mercedes GP "Silver Arrows"...
Is going to be the first time Mercedes have had there own official GP team since 1955 or something...

I never saw this coming, I must admit :frown:

[euan]

I did see it coming.

If you read the behind the scenes stuff (James Allens blog is excellent) it's been coming a while. MB tried it with McLaren but Ron wanted to keep it as McLaren so didn't sell. Along come Brawn, which already has a big factory and good key personal (Ross Brawn, Nick Fry) and already have a Merc engine in it.

They've also not been overly impressed with the scandals to hit McLaren, and you could also argue that they should have won more championships than they have recently with all the resources they have.

So all in all, you can see why if they wanted to stay in F1 they would get their own team. Of course, it's just a name, they really all run Ilmor engines rebadged with the star ;-)

So, I also think that's Kimi's seat out the window at McLaren. Why pay him 15 million in ice creams when you can have two British world champions and pay both about 8 million a season? Button also has been very consistent in his ability to bring a car home (not always quickly) and is a different style of driver so they should complement each other nicely.