With the perspective of most of the year to look back upon, Brawn is remarkably up-front in his assessment of Mercedes' season

One of the more puzzling stories of this season has been the relatively poor performance of the team that won last year's world championship, back when it was called Brawn rather than Mercedes.

A lot of theories have been put forward to explain it: that last year was just a blip created by the specific circumstances of the Brawn BGP 001's creation, in that it had a longer gestation period than any other car, had more windtunnel hours devoted to its design - and into the bargain received the 11th-hour gift of Formula 1's best engine. Then there's the line that so preoccupied was the management with overseeing the team's change of ownership at the end of last year that the 2010 car's gestation rather got overlooked.

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