Ross Brawn has confirmed that he will leave the Brackley based outfit at the end of year.
After much speculation, Brawn who has enjoyed success with Benetton, Ferrari and his own racing team Brawn Racing, has decided to call it a day at Mercedes as he feels that its the perfect time for him to leave with the new 2014 regulations coming into play from next year. “The most important consideration in my decision to step down from the role as team principal was to ensure that the timing was right for the team in order to ensure its future success,” said Brawn.
Brawn will be succeeded by Paddy Lowe who will take over the technical responsibility of the team and Toto Wolff who will run the commercial side of the team.
Non-executive chairman of Mercedes, Niki Lauda thanked Brawn for his contribution to the team:
“First of all and most importantly, we must say thank you to Ross. When you consider the step that has been made from finishing fifth in 2012 to the second place that we have secured this season, he has been the architect of this success. He put the plans in place to recruit key people since early 2011, and the performance this season shows that the team is on the right track.
“We have had long discussions with Ross about how he could continue with the team but it is a basic fact that you cannot hold somebody back when they have chosen to move on,” said Niki Lauda after months of discussions to try and keep Brawn in the team.
There is still no word on what he will do in the future. There are a number of possibility for Brawn at the moment. He could move to either Ferrari, Williams or McLaren. It’s an open market for him at the moment. There is also talk of a possible role for him at the FIA. His final day at Mercedes will be on 31 December 2013. It will make things quite tricky for him to move to a new team in such a short space of time.
It will be interesting to see where he ends up.
