Nigel Roebuck: Fifth Column

Upon learning of Ross Brawn's move to Honda, I confess that my first reaction was to ponder - yet once more - on the foolishness (and more) of Nigel Stepney. For all his bitterness and delusions of grandeur, had he trod the straight and narrow at Maranello for one more year, he might be in the pound seats now to work again with his former boss.

Whatever we think of Stepney, and the chaos he and Mike Coughlan have wrought on Formula 1, there was never any doubt about his abilities as a chief mechanic. During Stepney's time at Ferrari, Michael Schumacher won five world championships on the trot, and the level of consistent reliability achieved by the team was staggering. Even his most avowed critic would hesitate to dispute that Stepney's contribution to this was other than considerable: Ferrari may have 'won' the constructors' championship again in 2007, but by their standards reliability was notably less impressive than before.

While Brawn - whom Stepney reveres - was at Ferrari, all was reasonably well, but once Ross had decided on a sabbatical, on a year of family life and fishing, his colleague, while perhaps not expecting to succeed him as technical director, clearly anticipated serious promotion. When this failed to materialise - and when the previously little known Mario Almondo was named as Brawn's successor - Stepney was incensed, and thus began the train of events that have so disfigured the sport this year.

The irony is that Stepney's thoughts quickly turned to Honda, reckoning that he and Coughlan could present themselves as a highly-paid 'rescue package' to a team in dire distress. In July, when the spy scandal case first erupted, Nick Fry admitted to a meeting with the pair in May, but nothing came of it. Only now do we learn that, a month earlier, he had made an initial approach to Brawn.

At the time Ross quite correctly pointed out that, should he choose to return to F1, Ferrari had first call on his services. In mid-September, to some surprise, he made a public reappearance, accompanying the Ferrari party to the World Motor Sport Council hearing in Paris, which led everyone to conclude that he would indeed be rejoining the team for 2008.

The belief had always been that Brawn would only return to Ferrari as team principal, and the assumption now is that it was on this point that discussions foundered, allowing Ross to take up a similar position with Honda. Within minutes of the announcement, Ferrari issued a statement, confirming that Stefano Domenicali will succeed Jean Todt.

A new start for Brawn, then, and one which, for all his love of Italy, will allow him to reside full-time in the UK again. In one way, it's a surprise, and in another not. If ever a team had need of a man of Ross's abilities it is Honda, which spent who knows how much this year amassing a grand total of six championship points, but more than once in the past he had said - as did the late Harvey Postlethwaite before him - that it was difficult to envisage working for another team after Ferrari.

Brawn faces a monumental challenge - but then so he did when he went to Ferrari, and look how well that turned out. Very well, he had the powerful support of Todt (already installed and unravelling the tangle that Ferrari's racing department had become), and already, from the Benetton days, strong and familiar working relationships with Michael Schumacher and Rory Byrne. For all that, to instil 'English' F1 work practices into the Maranello mentality was not the work of a moment.

Now Ross starts work at Honda, and it seems, mercifully, that he has pretty well carte blanche, which is what he will need if he is to transform the team. His very appointment suggests that Honda have at last grasped the fundamental principle that F1 is all about speed of response, that decision by committee will not get it done.

Rubens Barrichello is delighted by Brawn's arrival, having worked with him for six years at Ferrari - and having ever since wondered quite why he prematurely ended his contract there to join Honda. For the first time in his 15- year F1 career, Rubens failed to score a point this season.

In a timely interview last weekend, Jenson Button made it publicly clear that his patience with Honda was under some strain, and that if things did not signally improve in 2008, he would be heading for the exit. The arrival of Brawn can only have hugely increased Honda's chances of keeping him on board, and it is inconceivable that next year's car will be other than significantly better than the RA107, which Jenson described - charitably, I thought - as 'a dog'.

In the circumstances in which he found himself, Button acquitted himself well indeed - in every sense. On the one hand, having finally won a grand prix in 2006, he then went into his eighth season in the sure knowledge that he was wasting his time. Yes, he was being well compensated for his embarrassment, but facing 17 races in that car must have felt like looking down the wrong end of a telescope.

Whenever conditions allowed - in other words, whenever it rained, and everyone was short of grip - Jenson was well able to remind us of his fundamental class in an F1 car, but much of the time he was obliged to look on as his '06 car - now disguised as a Super Aguri - outpaced its successor.

As well as that, of course, there were the endless questions about L Hamilton - the new British star - and if Button dealt with them generously, the irritation factor would have tried a saint. It said much for him that he remained essentially good-natured throughout, and certainly it's a fact that his efforts with that recalcitrant car did not go unnoticed by any team principal with eyes to see. Jenson, with his silky driving style, should benefit more than most from the traction control ban next year.

At the weekend, as usual, he was asked about Lewis, and made the very reasonable point that it should not be assumed that, having lost the world championship by only a point (or two) this year, he was a shoe-in for the '08 title. Pointing out the strength of the McLaren-Mercedes package, Jenson suggested that maybe - just maybe - Hamilton had lost the best championship chance he would ever have.

Meantime, elsewhere in 'the media', Lewis came under the cosh for allowing, on Michael Parkinson's TV show, that one of the attractions of moving to Switzerland was keeping more of his cash from the grasping fingers of Gordon Brown - not that he put it so indelicately, of course.

The reaction of some elements in the press was extraordinary, people writing that Hamilton had 'admitted' that tax advantages were an element in his decision, as if this were something of which to be slightly ashamed. Were they not aware that most of the F1 grid lives in Monaco, and has done for years?

Talk about nothing new under the sun. Why did Jimmy Clark race only once in England in 1967, the last full season of his life? Because he was living in Paris 'for tax reasons', and was allowed only a very few days in the UK. Why, the following year, did Jackie Stewart move from Scotland to Switzerland? Because it dawned on him that most of the time, as he put it, he was risking his life for the Chancellor of the Exchequer: "I was paying 93 per cent income tax - I was keeping seven pennies of every pound I earned. The situation was untenable..."

Probably, as with his friend Sean Connery, that postponed JYS's knighthood by 20 years or so, but I'm sure it's a price he considers, on balance, worth paying.