Brawn GP is now officially an F1 team. After Honda announced in November that they will be canceling their F1 program, no-one was sure what will happen with what was left. It would have been more expensive for Honda to completely disband the team rather than to sell it at a loss, while also being silly to throw away almost half a year worth of development on the new car. A couple of new possible owners were linked with interest in buying the team, including Richard Branson, which would have created a Virgin F1 team (which would have been extremely cool).

However, the team was purchased by Ross Brawn, previously the technical director of the team. Before Brawn joined Honda, he was the technical director at Ferrari during the Schumacher years. Thus, he has a vast amount of knowledge and experience on how to technically set up and run a successful F1 team. Whether he’s capable of completely running an F1 team remains to be seen.

2009 will be a very interesting year for this team. Although the team has lost a lot of testing and development time from November to February, the chassis and body was being designed from the beginning of 2008 by Honda, which put a lot of money and resources into it. Also, the team will be using the same engine employed by Mercedes Benz, which will give them a big advantage over the other mid-field teams. It is speculated that the new engine will give the team a 60hp power increase over the 2008 Honda engine.

Brawn GP will be employing Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello as drivers. This came as a surprise, but it does make a lot of sense. The team is still in disarray after the Honda sale and they need as much experienced people as possible. While these two drivers are certainly experienced, it is doubtful that either will be able to win a race on merit.