Brawn Frustrated by Staff Moves

The reigning World Champions suffered a setback in performance at last weekend's Turkish Grand Prix, after appearing to make a slight recovery in Hungary, and Brawn is not shying away from the work the team need to do to rescue their campaign.

But speaking in Istanbul, Brawn said that part of the reason for Ferrari's disappointing efforts this year was because some of their advantages had been wiped away thanks to rival outfits gaining knowledge from staff who have left Maranello.

"We have been happy with the development we made from last year to this year," said Brawn. "Taking account of the regulation changes I have been very happy with the performance we have achieved, but obviously our competitors have done a better job and made more progress than we were able to.

"The progress we have made was very good, but as a package we have not done a good enough job. You have to say that a couple of our competitors were not doing a good job in the past and now doing better.

"There's a process in Formula One whereby people move around and philosophies and cultures get spread to other teams. (Aerodynamicist) Nicolas Tombasis left Ferrari and went to McLaren and that had an effect. The car they produced last year was a much better car than they had before he was there.

"All the things that we worked on, all the philosophies and cultures we developed, were suddenly made available to another team. Not in a malicious way, but he knows how Ferrari works and that is the nature of Formula One."

He added: "It is very difficult to maintain an advantage all the time. Key players are a target for other teams, knowledge and expertise gets diffused to other teams."