Brawn's strategy for saving F1 from itself

A decade ago Ross Brawn was just about to embark on an extraordinary 2009 season, in which a rapidly organised Formula 1 team carrying his name would win the world championship and take Jenson Button to a shock drivers' crown.

It was a remarkable feel-good year, with the incredible back story of Honda's withdrawal, and showed that sometimes the F1 form book really can be ripped up and thrown away.

The Brawn GP success led directly to the formation of a Mercedes team that has now celebrated five consecutive double titles (drivers' and manufacturers'), albeit in the face of stronger competition over the past couple of seasons.

Ten years after that fairytale triumph, Brawn's current job is in essence to create an environment where results are less predictable than they have been of late and there is at least some chance for the underdog to enjoy their day in the sun.

After leaving Mercedes in February 2014 Brawn enjoyed almost three years off, devoting most of his energies to finally spending some quality time with his family and pursuing his favoured leisure pursuit of fishing.

He still found time to cooperate with former Williams boss Adam Parr on the book Total Competition: Lessons from Formula 1, in which he expanded on his management skills and, to some degree, on what was wrong with the way Bernie Ecclestone ran F1.

If Brawn was actively or subconsciously making a pitch for Bernie's job, it worked. In January 2017 he was named by Liberty as F1's managing director of motorsports, working alongside Chase Carey and Sean Bratches.

It's been a busy two years and it's only going to get busier as plans for 2021 gather momentum. Brawn is at the heart of the technical and sporting regulation changes that will, along with financial restrictions and the new commercial arrangements, represent the biggest revolution the championship has ever undertaken in one hit.

"2021 is a big change. There will be some who see the cars and don't like them" Ross Brawn

When we meet at F1's swish new HQ, where his office overlooks London's Haymarket, Brawn is as flat-out as ever. Even my carefully squeezed-in slot with him is interrupted when F1 technical expert Pat Symonds pops in to notify his boss of a later phone conference with the FIA.

At 64, Brawn is as busy as he ever was when overseeing team operations at Ferrari, or running the whole show at Mercedes.

We're just over halfway between the day he took up the role and the first race of the 2021 season. It's obvious that much activity is going on behind the scenes, but so far little has been confirmed, at least for public consumption. Does he feel that the new management has made progress?

"Substantial progress," he says. "There's a different approach with regard to this from Chase and Liberty in that they prefer to have their negotiations in private. That's a bit of a change. F1 classically had all the negotiations in public, and there are still one or two teams who lapsed into that mode.

"But knowing what's going on behind the scenes, there's been a huge amount of work done in various avenues that we are pursuing. When we started this we said it's the first time that there has been resource put into improving the sport, and improving the sport for the fans first and foremost, but improving the sport for all the stakeholders, including ourselves.

"So it's the first time that a team has been put together to do that. And it's taken a little time to settle and find out what's working and what's not working. But I actually think we've made a lot of progress.

"If I look at the purely technical side, and I see the 2021 car that we've got today in development and where we were two years ago, then I think it's very encouraging. I'm particularly encouraged because on the car side all the teams have been very cooperative and it's been an inclusive process. They've been very aware of what's going on.

"And they've been contributing. Particularly in the past few months all the teams have stepped up to devote resource to make sure we have the best racing car we can in 2021. They get it, they now understand what they can achieve here and they're all making a super effort to achieve it."

Having been on the other side of the fence, Brawn knew it wouldn't be easy. Has his job proved to be more stressful than expected?

"Not really. It would have been a dream to walk in and have everyone open the door and say, 'carry on and do what you want'. That's never going to happen. It's too big a sport for that to happen.

"The FIA has very strong interests in the sport and where it goes, the teams have a very strong interest in the sport - they're the ones who invest massively in it. And you've got the promoters and the circuits.

"So there are many elements. The thing I've learned, which I knew before but which has been reinforced, is you just won't make everyone happy all the time.

"You have to pick a path that you think will achieve the objectives and will fit with as many of the stakeholders as you can."

As a poacher turned gamekeeper, Brawn knows all the tricks and he is well aware that it's the duty of every team boss to look after his or her company's interests. Often the big picture is not a priority.

"I'm not going to tell you who they are, but we have teams where you can take everything they say with a completely open mind and you know they are being clear and objective, and you have teams who have an agenda.

"That will change over time, the more open and inclusive the way it works. We want to find commercial agreements that are transparent and everybody's part of. We know historically that's never been the case - there have been side deals done, individual deals done, and faits accomplis, take it, leave it.

"We're trying to take a different approach. It just takes a while for everyone to adjust to that."

Isn't that self-interest inevitable?

"I don't blame them. They have to look after their own team. But they also have to take a view of the health of the sport, financially, the appeal to fans, which direction the sport should go. It's the most technically complex sport in the world. It needs careful management.

"If you look at soccer, even though it's going through a bit of a revolution with the video ref systems and so on, basically the pitch is a certain size, there's a goal at each end, it's a very simple principle. And even that has its challenges.

"We have a very complex sport because we enjoy the fact that there's a challenge between engineers as well as the challenge between drivers. That's what gives an extra facet to F1, and we don't want to lose that.

"So it's a much more difficult sport to manage. I think if you leave it alone it evolves in the wrong direction. That means you have to be involved in nurturing it and steering it in the right direction."

One of the main challenges is that generally people don't like change, be they team bosses or fans. As one example, the recent news over the point for fastest lap, which had been debated at length, emerged to widely negative reviews on social media.

"I think fans like change when it brings better racing and better entertainment. They may object to change if they see it being done for the wrong reasons. And maybe people are a bit uncomfortable when things change.

"I personally think there are some references that we have to keep - the length of the race and the nature of the race. I don't think reversed grids would be at the right level for F1. It works in other formulas - we know that from our own experience.

"But there are different requirements in Formula 2 than F1. We're definitely not into gimmicks, we're into nurturing and developing the racing and understanding what the fans enjoy and seeing how we can give them more of what they enjoy with integrity. We don't want it to be gimmicky, because I think that will turn fans off.

"We're learning more and more about our fans and what they enjoy. It's fascinating to start to understand the interests of our fans and what they like to see and what they don't like to see.

"But I think they accept change when it's going in the right direction. I mean, 2021 is a big change. There will be some who see the cars and don't like them, but I hope the majority will love them. They'll certainly love the benefits they'll see out on the track."

Much of what F1 is now doing has been driven by proper market research - which is a lot more informative than typically kneejerk Twitter reactions [have].

"Because it's never been done before we don't have lessons learned yet. We haven't done the full cycle in terms of changing things in response to the market research and seeing where it goes. We have in smaller areas.

"And it's all about what questions you ask. If you ask a fan, do you want to see closer racing and more overtaking, the answer is a clear yes. No-one is ever going to say no to that. But then it's getting deeper than that. What aspects do they love, is it about the drivers, is it about the teams, is it the combination, is it the tracks, the format of the racing?

"There's a lot of very useful stuff coming out of the market research. We've got some very experienced people in the company, but it's a new thing for F1, so we need to just proceed a little bit cautiously. But there's a lot of good stuff."

The research has made it clear that people don't want to see total domination by the big-budget teams.

"The budget cap will not be at a level which every team will bump into easily" Ross Brawn

"One thing that comes over very strongly is that fans are concerned about fairness. They want everyone to have a fair chance, and what they see is teams with a lot more resource than others, which is true, and they don't perceive that as fair.

"And so the things that are going on to support this, the cost control, the revenue model, those are things that look secondary, but which actually have a big impact on the fairness of F1 and the ability of drivers to race.

"You've got to be in a top-three car to stand a chance of winning a race these days, and if you're not then you won't win it and that's not right. We want the grandees, we want the marquee teams, but fans do not want to watch a race where they know one of three teams is going to win every weekend.

"I think the work that's going into cost control and the revenue model will bring a greater degree of fairness and will reduce the gaps between the haves and have-nots."

The limit on what teams can spend is crucial to F1's long-term strategy.

"The budget cap will not be at a level that every team will bump into easily. The majority of teams will be working to the budget cap. Probably two or three won't quite reach it, but they will be $10-20million short, rather than $120m short.

"Some of the money an F1 team spends is just going racing. There's a certain amount you have to spend. For a small team that's probably two-thirds of the budget, so you've only got a third left to spend on developing the car. For a big team it's a fifth of their budget, so they've got four-fifths left to go and spend on the car or drivers.

"That's where we've got to have more fairness in the approach. We don't want anyone to win who doesn't deserve to win, but we want more people able to win."

Is convincing the big teams to accept this new model the biggest challenge that Brawn and his colleagues face?

"Probably, yeah. They get it, but it's difficult for them to give it up. For them, it's a restructuring of their companies. And that's not a pleasant thing.

"On the technical side, everyone's got on board. We'll probably argue about bits and pieces, but that's progressing well. I'm pleased with that.

"The commercial side is the contentious area. Big teams are not going to give up what they've got, small teams want a bit more. Cost control - what does it cover, can you buy the parts or do you have to make them yourself? But we're getting through it. We're a long away ahead of where we were a year ago."

The big teams have actually been ramping up their staff numbers recently - in order to get as much R&D done on the 2021 regulations before any budget cap restrictions kick in and they have to downsize. It's the sort of no-compromise strategy that you can imagine Brawn himself employing a few years ago.

"That is typical F1, I don't know how you can do anything about that," he smiles. "But at least it shows that they think it's coming..."