Brawn GP's One Perfect Season

Rescued from Honda's withdrawal days before its first race, Brawn GP won both championships in 2009, its only year, and then became Mercedes.

Brawn GP was born from an emergency. In December 2008 Honda announced it was leaving Formula One, citing the financial crisis, and its team at Brackley in Northamptonshire faced closure. Ross Brawn, who had been running it, led a management buyout, famously for a symbolic single pound. The car Honda had begun developing was reworked to take a customer Mercedes engine and renamed the BGP 001, and Honda provided a budget for the season. The team's roots ran back further still, through Honda and British American Racing to Ken Tyrrell's team.

The car proved fast in testing, helped by its double diffuser, an aerodynamic design that rivals protested and the governing body declared legal in April 2009. At the opening race in Australia, Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello started from the front row and finished first and second.

Button then won six of the first seven rounds. The rest of the field closed in as the year went on, but Barrichello won at Valencia and Monza, and at the Brazilian Grand Prix Button climbed from 14th on the grid to fifth to clinch the drivers' title while Brawn secured the constructors' championship. Across the 17 races of 2009 the team won eight, scored 15 podiums and entered every round.

It never raced again under its own name. In November 2009 Mercedes, in partnership with Aabar Investments, bought a majority stake and renamed the team Mercedes GP for 2010, keeping much of the Brawn staff. Having entered one season and won both titles, Brawn GP is the only constructor with a perfect championship record.

Drivers

• Jenson Button