Honda to quit F1? - Now with added Brawn GP

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I suppose so. A sponsorship deal isn't something that happens over-night, so if this is true, Brawn would certainly have known about it for a long while now. But I can't see them waiting very long at all; Branson would want his brandng on the BGP-001 as soon as possible. If he is indeed flying out to Melbourne for the announcement, maybe they're waiting for him to get there before showing the thing off. I seem to recall reading somwhere that Brawn would have a sponsor and livery in time for the Australian Grand Prix, but that somewhere was most likely Wikipedia and not necessairly true.
 
Apologes for the double-post - my last one was nearly twelve hours ago - but Brawn GP have confirmed their deal with the Virgin Group:
Brawn GP sign Virgin deal
27 March 2009

The Brawn GP team a signed a new sponsorship deal with Virgin; the widely recognised name, headed by Richard Branson, was one of the parties linked with buying the ex-Honda team during the off season. The cars of Barrichello and Button ran with a plain white livery on Friday in Melbourne, but announcements regarding partners of the team are expected later today.

Ecclestone declared that he has been working closely with Virgin head Richard Branson. Branson, who has admitted considering a Formula 1 entry under the Virgin label in the future, has cut short a family skiing holiday to attend the Australian Grand Prix and be present for the announcement this weekend. As well as bringing the international brand name into the sport for the first time, the news is also significant as it is the first known sponsorship deal of the newly former Brawn GP team.

"Virgin and Brawn have come to commercial terms which Branson thinks are liable," F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone told The Times. "Both he and the team are happy." Ecclestone reported the new deal as he claimed he has been of assistance in putting the partnership together: "I've been pushing, pushing, pushing and pushing," he continued. "If Brawn hadn't have done it, Richard and I would have done it anyway but I am delighted how they have just got going on it and now have a deal in place. It's good for them and it's good for Formula 1, so I'm very happy with it."

Although the 'Virgin' label itself has never been been an F1 sponsor in the past, Branson did sign a deal with Eddie Jordan for the 2002 season which saw the 'Virgin Mobile' label on the cars, as well as later completing a deal with Super Aguri driver Takuma Sato for 'Virgin Atlantic Japan'.
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Nothing on how Virgin will factor into Brawn's team - ie livery-wise - but they're showing promise and now they've got a sponsor with money to spare. At this rate, it looks like Brawn GP could well be setting themselves up as a pretty powerful force in the future. A return to the Williams dominance in the 1980s - in that a private team is the envy of the grid - perhaps?
 
MildAshers
Unless its ready to apply and they dont want it to be revealed until later on....could happen:P
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Painting a livery takes around 40 hours for Renault and McLaren, according to Racecar Engineering - preparing the car, applying each layer of paint, drying it, adding layers of finish, then the decals.
 
Metar
Painting a livery takes around 40 hours for Renault and McLaren, according to Racecar Engineering - preparing the car, applying each layer of paint, drying it, adding layers of finish, then the decals.
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Make sense. Like I said, Renault's ING livery weighed six kilograms.

Anyway, apparently Brawn will have a 'proper' livery in time for Sepang. No, I don't have a source; someone over at the BATracer forums posted it, but didn't have a link to anything.
 
Every livery does - even white "blank" cars have several layers of white and clear coating added, else we'd have exposed carbon parts - not exactly the best look (remember, F1 teams sort their weaves according to the direction that fits the strength/rigidity requirements best - not necessarily the clean lines seen on road-cars with CFRE panels).
 
After that result, I should think people will be falling over themselves to sponsor the team. Assuming they can get past Branson; given his involvement with SpaceShipTwo and the newly-formed Virgin Galactic, I wonder if we might see something along the lines of this. I doubt it, though, because flights cost $200,000 a pop. Maybe we'll see a one-off the weekend before the inaugural flight.
 
I wonder when Brawn is going to get themselves a proper Virgin livery. Surely the simple label on the cars like during the race isn't going to be permanent.
 
Virgin have apparently signed a thirty million dollar deal with Brawn for next year, one which will allow them to sell space on the cars; Malboro have the same arrangement with Ferrari.

This is probably a good thing: Brawn can concentrate on their performance, and Branson an use both his name and that of his company to attract new sponsors. I don't know who the profits would go to - Brawn or Branson; probably the latter - but it sounds like exactly what Brawn need, especially if Virgin can sell space on the car and Brawn get the sponsor money.
 
When Virgin have sold the space on the car.

I imagine that by now this will be the livery of the car unless there is a major sponsor who wants something special, like ING on the Renault.
 
Unless Virgin elect to take up more space, really. They've bought the rights to sell the space, which, unless I've very much mistaken, means they also own the space; you can't sell the rights to something you don't own. I imagine we might be seeing some more in time for China; it takes forty hours to apply the paint, which they do in an old brickworks in England. Then the decals are applied, which I imgine would not take anywhere enar as long given that they showed up on the Brawns overnight. As the brickworks where the cars are painted do it for half the grid - and because all of the cars are painted, barring an acciden this weekend - and can paint several cars at once, I imagine the two BGP-001s could be flown back to England on Monday, painted over the course of the next few days, and be in Shanghai with a week to spare. It's then simply a case of putting the decals on both cars, and they should be ready. After all, Branson did say there were announcements likely to be made within a month of the Australian Grand Prix - so we should know by Bahrain - and it's likely he'll want as much coverage as possible (but he'd also understand that right now, the most important thing is for Brawn to concentrate on the racing). If they don't have a full livery in time for China, it's likely they'll be in full regalia come Catalunya.

Failing that
 
ExigeEvan
Maybe. If they plaster a few images of air hostesses on it I won't be complaining.
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Eh, reminds too much of the quite low depths of Tyrrell using Xena sponsorship in 1997.
The Virgin red/white streaks would be a nice livery on its own, especially combined with the white/black/yellow of Brawn.
 
The one thing that has annoyed me about Brawn, and this is not a fault of their own, is the insistence in the media that this team went from nothing to race winners in just 2 weeks. The media seem ignorant of the fact that this is basically the Honda team that kept working on the car despite not knowing if they'd be racing this season.
 
Yes but they have gone from being the 2nd worst team to the best team between the end of one season and the start of the next. Which ever way you look at it, that's an impressive achievement.
 
Exactly. It's not an "underdog" any way you view it - it's an experienced driver-pairing, on a large, old and experienced team, that just so happens to have changed the name. Yes, it's impressive that they went from 2nd-last to first - but then again, with these rule-changes, Toyota and Williams also moved ahead, at McLaren's and Ferrari's expense.. Two lost months of testing aren't really that much of a handicap either - so far.
 
ExigeEvan
The one thing that has annoyed me about Brawn, and this is not a fault of their own, is the insistence in the media that this team went from nothing to race winners in just 2 weeks. The media seem ignorant of the fact that this is basically the Honda team that kept working on the car despite not knowing if they'd be racing this season.
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Ok - but I won't believe you if you even try to say you saw it coming.

No, the team didn't come from nothing, but they did come from nowhere and the team themselves (the ex-Tyrrell/BAR team) have not been anywhere near a dominant team for over 30 years.

I have no problem with them being given this much media attention and people saying that "its not a fairytale" either only just started watching F1 or are complete morons, this was a team we didn't think would be existing this year, let alone winning. If thats not fairytale I don't know what is.

I agree they are not underdogs but I disagree that this isn't a surprise and an amazing (and much needed in recent times) story for F1.
 
It's a surprise simply because we were all so deeply disappointed with Honda for so long. If we look at it from the right perspective, you notice the small hints: The fact that in the previous formula, they were so crappy they couldn't really catch up. That they actually recruited, apart from Brawn, some pretty brilliant engineers and aerodynamicists on their staff in the last year. And, of course, that they began working exclusively on the 2009 car even before 2008's halfway mark.

It's still an amazing and unexpected feat, if only because of the financial uncertainty they suffered from December until, basically, now. It wouldn't be extraordinary at all if it was still called Honda, and with a car testing since February.
 
Ardius
Ok - but I won't believe you if you even try to say you saw it coming.

No, the team didn't come from nothing, but they did come from nowhere and the team themselves (the ex-Tyrrell/BAR team) have not been anywhere near a dominant team for over 30 years.

I have no problem with them being given this much media attention and people saying that "its not a fairytale" either only just started watching F1 or are complete morons, this was a team we didn't think would be existing this year, let alone winning. If thats not fairytale I don't know what is.

I agree they are not underdogs but I disagree that this isn't a surprise and an amazing (and much needed in recent times) story for F1.
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Sorry bud, but you've focused on completely the wrong part.

My big issue is the whole magical "2 weeks". It makes it seem that everyone else on the grid are idiots because they've spent so much longer and aren't as good. There's no denying that it takes an incredible turn around to go from back of the grid to the front even with rule changes, but to say that it happened in 2 weeks is almost an insult to the other teams.
 
Metar
It's a surprise simply because we were all so deeply disappointed with Honda for so long. If we look at it from the right perspective, you notice the small hints: The fact that in the previous formula, they were so crappy they couldn't really catch up. That they actually recruited, apart from Brawn, some pretty brilliant engineers and aerodynamicists on their staff in the last year. And, of course, that they began working exclusively on the 2009 car even before 2008's halfway mark.

It's still an amazing and unexpected feat, if only because of the financial uncertainty they suffered from December until, basically, now. It wouldn't be extraordinary at all if it was still called Honda, and with a car testing since February.
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Oh yes, the hints were there.
In fact, recently Ross has hit back at the other teams complaints about the diffuser saying that as early as March 08 he had already suggested tightening the rules in this gray area but the other teams rejected it. Of course, he didn't tell them the ideas he had, but its not like he hadn't tried to help stop teams taking advantage of it.
Source:
http://allenonf1.wordpress.com/2009/04/05/why-ross-brawn-has-a-clear-consience/

ExigeEvan
Sorry bud, but you've focused on completely the wrong part.

My big issue is the whole magical "2 weeks". It makes it seem that everyone else on the grid are idiots because they've spent so much longer and aren't as good. There's no denying that it takes an incredible turn around to go from back of the grid to the front even with rule changes, but to say that it happened in 2 weeks is almost an insult to the other teams.
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Then I agree if someone has been saying that but I clearly don't read the right (wrong? :lol:) news outlets.
 
Ardius
Ok - but I won't believe you if you even try to say you saw it coming.
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Just to stick my nose in, back midway through last year when there were rumours Alonso would either go to Honda or Renault I said that if I was Alonso I’d go to Honda. They were always going to be at the front.
 
Blake
Just to stick my nose in, back midway through last year when there were rumours Alonso would either go to Honda or Renault I said that if I was Alonso I’d go to Honda. They were always going to be at the front.
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:lol: How could you know though? Not even Honda knew that last year, I mean, the team were even surprised when they turned up to Barcelona and blasted everyone's times.
 
Because Honda knew that 2009 would bring in a raft of new regulations; after all, Ross Brawn raised the issue of the rear diffuser a year ago. They knew that 2008 was going to be a rough year, but come 2009, everything would be tabula rasa. So they abandoned development of the RA108 early on in its life cycle and poured all their energies into developing what would have been known as the RA109. They had at least six months' head start on the other teams, and probably more. Honda were always going to be quick because they had so much time to build a new racing car.
 

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