LONDON: Ross Brawn will stand down as principal and leave the Mercedes Formula One team at the end of the year, Mercedes said in a statement yesterday.
The Briton, who turned 59 last week, will hand over his responsibilities to executive directors Toto Wolff (business) and Paddy Lowe (technical) and formally leave the British-based team on December 31.
The official announcement ended one of the longest running sagas of the season, with speculation surrounding Brawn’s future since before the championship started in March.
“The most important consideration in my decision to step down from the role as team principal was to ensure that the timing was right for the team in order to ensure its future success,” Brawn said in the statement.
“The succession planning process that we have implemented during this year means we are now ready to conduct the transition from my current responsibilities to a new leadership team composed of Toto and Paddy.”
His departure will bring change for drivers Lewis Hamilton, Britain’s 2008 world champion with McLaren, and Germany’s Nico Rosberg although the succession has been widely discussed and Brawn’s successors have had time to work themselves in.
Lowe was with Hamilton at McLaren previously while Austrian Wolff, a former Williams team director, is also in charge of Mercedes’ broader motorsport activities.
Brawn is one of the most successful and respected figures in the sport after winning a string of world championships with three different teams.
The bespectacled Englishman, a keen Manchester United football fan, was the tactical brains behind Michael Schumacher’s seven world championships - two with Benetton and then five in a row at Ferrari between 2000-04 .
After leaving Ferrari at the end of 2006 to take a sabbatical, and spend some time fishing, he joined the Honda team at the end of 2007 and led them until the Japanese manufacturer withdrew from the sport a year later.
With Brawn GB, the team that emerged from the remains of Honda and was later sold to Mercedes, he won both world championships in 2009.
India’s Mahindra Racing joins Formula E
NEW DELHI: Mahindra Racing will join the new Formula E electric racing series starting next year as the eighth, and only Indian, team, the Mumbai-based Mahindra Group said yesterday.
The $16.2bn multinational group said it had signed an agreement with Formula E Holdings to join the series starting in China in September, with races in 10 leading cities including Berlin.
“We strongly believe that Formula E can provide an excellent global showcase for our electric vehicle technology,” group chairman and managing director Anand Mahindra said in a statement. The group, which manufactures Mahindra Reva electric vehicles, said joining Formula E was a “natural step”.
“With advanced operations and expertise in electronics, IT, automotive technologies and manufacturing, we are already seeing the fusion of this technology into our electric vehicle operations,” Anand said.
“Racing will further accelerate that trend while Formula E is set to raise awareness globally about the benefits of electric vehicles.”
Mahindra Racing is no stranger in motorsports, having joined MotoGP in 2011. India has a Formula One team in Force India but there is no Indian driver on the F1 grid. AGENCIES
