The Brawn fairytale
Andrew Benson chronicles a remarkable year for Brawn GP. Apparently (although not in the track), the car was 'a botch job':
[The Brawn car] was the fastest thing in the field by a mile, and Jenson Button went on to win six of the first seven races, the foundation for the championship he finally clinched on Sunday.
What is less well known, though, is that the car is, in the words of my source, "a botch job".
It was designed for a Honda engine, and it was not until December that the team knew they would be using a Mercedes. That necessitated some pretty crude changes.
"The chassis had the back six inches cut off to fit the engine in - the sort of thing you wouldn't normally do even with a test car," says my source. "And the gearbox was in the wrong place because the crank-centre height is different. There's a massive amount of compromise in the cars."
