Last Sunday, I was delighted to see UK racing team Brawn GP secure the 2009 Formula One Constructors’ Championship at the Brazilian Grand Prix in Interlagos, with driver Jenson Button coming from fourteenth position on the grid to a fifth place finish to take the Championship with one race of the season to go.

As pleased as I was for Mr Button, I was absolutely overjoyed to see the expression of happiness, and tears of joy, on the face of British Motorsport engineer and Brawn team owner Dr Ross Brawn when he spoke after the Big Win.

For here’s the very man who, as you might recall, formed the Brawn GP team less than a year ago when he bought it from Japanese car behemoth Honda who decided to abandon the sport when the economic crisis hit.

After achieving such a victory, Dr Brawn displayed not one ounce of complacency or self-satisfaction. Instead, he paid tribute to drivers Button, his fellow team mate Rubens Barrichello and to Mercedes-Benz High Performance Engines and McLaren, acknowledging the role that both these companies had played in assuring the company’s success.

In addition to paying homage to the folks that worked at his factory in Brackley in Northamptonshire, Brawn also thanked everyone who had worked with the team in the past but couldn’t be there with them this season, a nod to the individuals that were laid off as the Brawn team was downsized this year.

In doing so, Dr Brawn sent out a clear message that he wanted those folks to feel a part of the team’s new found success though the hard work that they had put in.

Now as readers to this column might be aware, I’m not a fan of F1 motor racing. That’s mainly due to the fact, that, as far as I’m concerned, the so-called sport has always seemed no more than an excuse for a bunch of egotistical petrol heads to pollute the planet in a grand fashion.

But I am a fan of folks who get out there and do big things like Dr Brawn. Oh sure, it would have been easy for him to roll over and play dead after Honda revealed that it wasn’t interesting in tearing around the track anymore. But he didn’t. Instead, this passionate man took the red bull by the horns, bought the company and turned it around in the space of a year, transforming it into a world-beating entity.

And, after he had done so, did he sit there gloating over his victory? No he didn’t. Instead, this unassuming chap actually paid tribute to all of the folks that had helped him along the way, not just drivers Button and Barrichello, but the folks that he’d had to lay off along the path to triumph.

Whether I ever get around to ever being interested in the sport that Dr Brawn’s team is involved in is questionable. But nevertheless, I do admire the values, integrity and sheer grit of Dr Brawn himself.

So while the actual winners of last Sunday’s race have already celebrated their victory by spraying expensive champagne over each other in a incongruous fashion, I shall celebrate Dr Brawn, the man, over a pleasant bottle of rather less expensive Commanderie de Mazeyres Pomerol, circa 2005.
This comment was originally published in the Engineeringtalk Newsletter