Bad news for some workers at Brawn GP. Ross Brawn’s racing stables, formerly Bar and Honda, will reduce its staff by a third, with redundancies for 270 workers.
Nick Fry, the chief executive of Brawn, confirmed the details after Jenson Button took the chequered flag at the Australian Grand Prix, helping his team to the most successful Formula One debut in 55 years.
Brawn has replaced Honda after its principal Ross Brawn and Mr Fry led a management buyout.
Mr Fry said: “Its about 270 (job losses). We are about 700 people at the moment and we talked to the staff about going down to about 430, something like that, which is where we [predecessors BAR] were in 2004,” said Fry.
“It’s very unfortunate that we’ve got to do that but its the change of technical regulations and obviously we are now a private team.”
Max Mosley, president of motorsport’s governing body the FIA, has repeatedly stressed the need for F1 teams to trim their workforce.
Additionally, F1’s rules have changed this season - meaning fewer staff are needed now that testing is banned from the start of the season to the end of the year.
Brawn are also now buying in their engine from McLaren’s partners Mercedes.
Fry revealed that staff at Brawn’s Brackley factory in England had been informed and redundancy letters had gone out in mid-March.
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