Brawn salutes ‘amazing' team

Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello took their seventh 1-2 of the season after dominating the action in Budapest despite a scary moment involving the fuel rig on Rubens Barrichello's car.

A smiling Brawn admitted after the race that he was delighted with the outcome after a humiliating time at the event last year and said it was down to the superb group of people that worked for the Italian squad.

"It always takes a while to sink in, but it's been a fantastic year and a 1-2 at Hungary after last year, I'm so proud," the Briton said. "Everybody has just done a fantastic job this year. It's an amazing group of people who support each other, work with each other and have the same objective and just get on with it - it's something I've never experienced before and we are seeing the results."

But the dream result didn't go without a hitch. Following the first round of pitstops the pit crew discovered a leak on the hose that supplied fuel to Barrichello's car. The team were forced to use Schumacher's rig on Barichello's car in the next pitstops but Brawn acknowledged the problem could have been much worse.

"Nigel (Stepney) has got to investigate, but there was a break-away coupling that had cracked," he explained, "they changed both of them to be cautious, but it created a bit of panic for if there had been a Safety Car we wouldn't have been able to re-fuel the car. But we didn't tell the drivers, we kept quiet and as always the people involved fixed it efficiently, quietly and did a great job."

Asked if the world champions would now be respected by the other teams for its achievements rather than resented, Brawn replied: "I hope so, I know that when McLaren were wining and Williams were winning I always respected the job they were doing and tried to beat them."

The worrying thing for Ferrari's rivals is that the current 'dream' team will be together again next year and, despite the new rules that will be introduced for the 2005 season, Brawn is confident the team can stay out front.

"It's very unusual for us to have kept this group of people together for so long because after a while people get tempted to go elsewhere," he said. "It will be a big challenge next year with the change to the championship regulations that will shake things up, but we'll have the same group of people and hopefully we can continue."