This Could, in Miami, the public sale home Bonhams will put up for bid Jenson Button’s Brawn GP automotive from the 2009 season. The automotive comes with an asterisk: it is not truly the one Button drove to the F1 world driver’s championship — it’s the one he was given underneath authorized duress.
The main points of Brawn GP’s 2009 F1 season quantity to one of many nice underdog tales in all of sports activities historical past: the staff, left for useless by its earlier house owners, received six of the primary seven races because of a superb “double diffuser” downforce breakthrough by engineer-owner Ross Brawn — solely to search out itself desperately attempting to keep up a dwindling late-season factors lead in each the drivers championship (for Jenson Button) and the constructor’s championship as the remainder of the paddock caught on, and caught up.
Because the historical past books and/or Keanu Reeves will remind us, Brawn GP and Button managed to white-knuckle their manner by means of the remainder of the season, keeping off Purple Bull-Renault and a younger Sebastian Vettel to lock up each F1 trophies within the season’s second-to-last race, at Interlagos.
Picture by: Sutton Pictures
Chequered flag for Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello at Australian GP 2009
The fairy story then turned a bit messy after everybody stepped off the ultimate podium. Per his contract, Jenson was owed a Brawn BGP 001 automotive from the season. Mercedes, having taken over Brawn heading into the 2010 season, purchased out Button’s contract — however by no means delivered the automotive. The reigning driver’s champion sued in April of 2010 for what he was owed.
Button rejected Mercedes’ first provide — a duplicate chassis manufactured within the Brawn manufacturing unit in the course of the off season — on the grounds that he needed the actual deal (and his contract stipulated as a lot). Since Ross Brawn himself saved the championship-winning 001/02 chassis, and Mercedes saved the 03, the court-mandated resolution led to Mercedes handing over the 01 chassis. Pushed by Button’s teammate Rubens Barrichello by means of the primary 14 races of the 2009 season, the automotive noticed six podiums, together with two wins at Valencia and Monza.
Button held onto his hard-won Brawn automotive up till final yr, when he bought it off to a personal proprietor. Now the BGP 001/01 chassis, itself a contentious reminder of that surreal season, will go up for public sale by way of Bonhams on Could 3 in Miami throughout F1’s Miami GP weekend.
Neither a gap value nor an estimated promoting vary has been shared by Bonhams, however with latest auctions of championship automobiles pushed by Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton gaveling within the vary of £5 million or extra, Button’s BGP 001/01 will definitely price greater than he paid for it.
