Brawn GP: The F1 Team Bought for £1 That Won the 2009 Title (Double Diffuser Explained)

How Brawn GP won the 2009 Formula 1 World Championship: Honda pulled out, Ross Brawn bought the team for £1, and the double diffuser made Jenson Button champion. The full story, with the diffuser explained. December 2008. Honda pulls out of Formula One, and the team at Brackley has no owner, no money and no engine. Seven hundred jobs are on the line. Less than a year later, that same team was champion of the world. Both titles. In its only season. This is the story of Brawn GP: a team reportedly bought for £1, a car rebuilt around a Mercedes engine in a few weeks, and a first test so fast the paddock called it a stunt. We explain the secret hidden under the car, how a diffuser works and why the double diffuser was worth around half a second a lap, plus the hybrid boost Brawn chose to leave out, and Jenson Button's fight from 14th on the grid to the title in Brazil. This is IMPOSSIBLE: the days the odds got it wrong. Was it the double diffuser, the car Honda left behind, or Ross Brawn refusing to give up? Tell me in the comments. CHAPTERS 0:00 December 2008 0:36 The end 1:15 The car nobody had seen 2:21 The gamble 3:26 The first test 4:05 The secret: what is a diffuser? 5:36 The double diffuser 6:21 KERS 7:24 The impossible 8:08 The fight 8:45 Brazil 9:27 What happened next 10:03 What if CREDITS Photos from Wikimedia Commons, cropped and graded for this video: 2009 Brawn BGP 001 Goodwood, 2009: Bahnfrend, CC BY-SA 4.0 Brawn Mercedes BGP 001: Jen_ross83, CC BY 2.0 Albert Park circuit main straight, 2022: AllAussieTraveller, CC BY-SA 4.0 Honda RA108, Honda Collection Hall: Morio, CC BY-SA 3.0 Jenson Button 2008 Britain: Marc Evans from Newbury, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0 Jenson Button at Bluewater 2009: ian mcwilliams from Chafford Hundred, England, CC BY 2.0 McLaren MP4-23 2008: Cord Rodefeld from Ulm, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0 Rubens Barrichello 2009 Germany: Cord Rodefeld from Ulm, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0 Sebastian Vettel 2009 Italy: ravas51, CC BY-SA 2.0 Ross Brawn, Goodwood Festival of Speed 2016: Matthew Lamb, CC BY-SA 2.0 Michael Schumacher 2010 Spain: Sara, CC BY 2.0 Lewis Hamilton 2014 Singapore: Morio, CC BY-SA 4.0 Vista aérea del Autódromo José Carlos Pace: ProtoplasmaKid, CC BY-SA 4.0 Licences: CC BY 2.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 · CC BY-SA 2.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0 · CC BY-SA 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 Photos from period sources belong to their owners. If one is yours and you'd like a credit or its removal, comment or get in touch. Some scenes are AI illustrations and AI video, not footage of real events. Technical diagrams are simplified. Music: "Seasons" by ANBR and "Hidden" by LaFaye (YouTube Audio Library). #F1 #Formula1 #BrawnGP #JensonButton #RossBrawn #F1History #DoubleDiffuser #Motorsport #Impossible