New Mercedes GP team principal Ross Brawn has said that he sold his team after a single season because continuing for another season would have been "an awful risk", adding that the Mercedes buyout was an opportunity to give the team a future.
Brawn GP lasted a single season after Ross Brawn bought out the failed Honda F1 team at the start of 2009, and last week sold a 75.1% stake in the team to Mercedes, in a move which saw the German manufacturer leave it's works linkup with the McLaren team and saw Brawn GP renamed as Mercedes GP for 2010.
Despite the sale, Brawn will continue as team principal, with the rest of the Brawn management also continuing in their 2009 roles.
And in an interview with The Independent newspaper, Brawn explained that he sold a majority stake in his team because he didn't want the role as a team owner indefinitely, and saw the Mercedes buyout as a chance to confirm the long-term future of the team.
"At some stage as a team owner you have to pass it on," Brawn explained in the interview, "I'm almost 55 and I'm not planning to do a Bernie [Ecclestone].
"It was tempting to try to repeat this year's success but it would have been an awful risk. We were already working with their engine group and all the stars aligned. It was an opportunity to give the team a very strong future."
When asked about whether he had any regrets over his name disappearing from the grid, Brawn said that he considered the success of Brawn GP over their single season in the sport meant that he did not regret the sale.
"As I said to the staff, it's sad to see the team only in existence for a year, but what a year!" Brawn chortled, "We've had a wonderful time, and in many ways it was a difficult decision, but now we've joined the most prestigious brand in the automotive world."
He added that when Honda announced their withdrawal at the end of the 2008 season, he assumed the team would end up folding, and that the option of becoming a team owner had never really been his plan.
"We had no notion that we might continue, but that was a subject we broached once we'd recovered from the initial shock," he explained about his and his fellow Brawn boss Nick Fry's reaction, "Could we keep it going? It didn't look very sensible, but at the same time, we hadn't really understood the huge costs of closing a company."
He added that he hadn't want to give up on F1 because he knew the potential of the 2009 car, and didn't want his final season in the sport to have been the dismal Honda year in 2008.
"It's possible that our poor performance in 2008 confirmed to Honda that they shouldn't continue, which was frustrating, because I didn't want to finish my Formula 1 career at the end of 2008, the worst championship I'd had for 15 years. And I knew we had a race-winning car for 2009."
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