2009 Formula 1 Season

The 2009 season is the stuff of motorsport legend, the story of an against-all-odds fairy tale. When Honda abruptly withdrew from Formula One at the end of 2008 amid the global financial crisis, team principal Ross Brawn led a management buyout to save the operation, creating Brawn GP literally weeks before the season began. With no title sponsor and a borrowed Mercedes engine, the new team should have been an also-ran. Instead it produced the class of the field, thanks largely to a brilliant interpretation of the new technical rules.

The decisive technical innovation was the double diffuser, a clever reading of the regulations pioneered by Brawn, Toyota and Williams that generated significantly more downforce. Combined with a strong chassis, it gave Jenson Button a rocket of a car. The British driver, a journeyman who had never been a championship contender, won six of the first seven races to build a commanding lead before the rest of the grid caught up technically. The season also introduced KERS, the kinetic energy recovery system, though the bigger gains came from the aerodynamic overhaul.

As the year progressed, the Brawn advantage eroded and Red Bull, with Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber, emerged as the strongest challengers along with a fast-improving McLaren. Button's win drought stretched alarmingly through the middle of the season, raising fears of a collapse, but the early cushion proved decisive. He clinched the title at the Brazilian Grand Prix with a superb charging drive through the field after a poor qualifying, sealing the championship with a race to spare.

Brawn GP completed the impossible by winning both the Drivers' and Constructors' Championships in its only season of existence, with Rubens Barrichello supporting Button's campaign. Mercedes purchased the team at season's end, laying the foundation for the dominant works outfit to come. The 2009 season also marked the beginning of the end for refuelling, which was banned for 2010, and it introduced a generation of new aerodynamic rules. Above all, it remains the ultimate underdog story, proof that ingenuity and a clever rulebook reading could topple the sport's wealthiest giants.