Team Lazarus
They say it's best to make a clean break, but Honda's exit from F1 seemed indecently hasty. No one suspected until the racing team turned up at its factory last December to find a note on the mantelpiece and all of its favourite LPs missing.
Reuters
Honda's thinking? You don't lavish hundreds of millions on a racing team when you're closing factories and laying off auto-workers. The F1 organisation, based in Brackley, Northamptonshire, had three months to find a new backer or face closure. So, no pressure.
Their top asset was Ross Brawn. Brawn had masterminded Michael Schumacher's seven drivers' world championships; he'd won with Benetton F1, restored Ferrari to greatness and disappeared into the sunset, clutching his fishing rods and a bag full of trophies. Honda lured him back then pulled the rug out with the job half done. He could have walked away, but he didn't. F1 had a new team: Brawn GP, with Ross cast as the eponymous, if reluctant, hero.
With the start of the season fast approaching, Brawn GP still didn't have an engine - an element perceived by most racing folk as being quite important - but finally a deal was done with Mercedes. It wasn't exactly a perfect fit in a car designed around a Honda powerplant but, given sufficient gaffer tape and a really big hammer, racing engineers can achieve great things.
The outfit turned up in Australia with a car bereft of sponsors and testing mileage. The message was, 'We're just happy to be here' - then that message shot off into the distance, leaving everyone else trailing in its wake. Jenson Button won the race and his Brawn team-mate, Rubens Barrichello, was second. For good measure, Button won five of the next six races and was bestowed the designation of World Champion-elect before the season reached half distance.
And as for Ross the Boss? At Ferrari he'd received a papal blessing. Now, thanks to a couple of miracles and an unlikely resurrection, the media were treating him like the Second Coming.
Ross said: "Did I ever want to have my name on a Formula One car? Actually I still don't..."
