Formula One news

Brawn GP with 'no doubts'

Nick Fry and Ross Brawn are confident that the Brawn team can maintain its pace to begin a title attack following its strong and rapid start to the 2009 championship. The two men, both key parts of the team's jigsaw for survival during the off-season, believe that the Brackley-based outfit has the resources, structure, tactics and drivers to clinch the ultimate prize.

It has been a staggeringly surprising two months for Brawn GP with two pole positions and three race victories, all coming out of four Grand Prix weekends which followed a seemingly doomed pre-season of uncertainly. Despite having to make redundancies from the team previously seen as Honda, the squad now leads the constructors' championship with almost double the number of points of second-placed Red Bull Racing.

Button passes Lewis Hamilton on Lap 2 of the Bahrain Grand Prix

"I think our team has got all the resources," Brawn chief executive Nick Fry said to The Times. "We have got a reasonable upgrade package for Barcelona - whether it will be as big as some other teams', we don't know; but do we have the resources to develop for the rest of the year? Yes, we do."

"I've got no doubts about Jenson's ability to win," continued team owner Ross Brawn of his current leading driver. "The way he is driving, that part is taken care of - it's up to us to produce the performance in the car, do the pit stops, the strategies and make sure the car is reliable." Brawn also talked of Michael Schumacher's ever-growing respect of the English star and how the German - who drove to all but three of his 91 wins with Brawn as technical director - had admired the Frome-born driver, particularly since their dices of the 2004 season.

The start of the European season - in Barcelona since 2006 - has traditionally seen the first significant upgrades added to cars although, for 2009, this will be more important than ever as teams strive to catch the likes of Brawn on the development front (for double-diffusers, for example). The return to the Catalan track will also be the first time the team has attended the circuit since discovering their lightning pace in the penultimate winter test.

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