Brawn did not display full pace in Oz
“I think, basically, that if someone is two-tenths off us they can feasibly win the race but, if we’re half a second in front, which is probably where we are at the moment, although we don’t necessarily look like that, it is just foolish to just annihilate people all the time. I think we have a little bit in the bag. We’ve got good stuff coming and I think we have reason to be confident."
“The visual bits are not really the performance drivers, it’s all the surfaces you can’t see that give you the real performance. One of the good things about the Brawn car is that competitors will look at all of it and say, ‘That’s the bit that’s making it fast.’ But it is not necessarily one thing; they could be focusing on something that is not really a big performance driver. We were looking at everybody else’s times asking why were they all so slow. Our research was telling us we would be the quickest car."
03/31/09 (GMM) Brawn GP recorded a one-two victory in Melbourne, but it seems the former Honda team could have destroyed rather than simply beaten its competition.
BMW-Sauber figures expressed huge disappointment about Robert Kubica's late crash with Sebastian Vettel last Sunday, insisting the Pole could have raced up to eventual winner Jenson Button and passed him.
"That's interesting," Briton Button, 29, grinned as he reflected on his win in St. Kilda – a beach suburb near Melbourne – before having to jet off to Malaysia.
"I don't think Kubica has any idea about whether I was driving as fast as I could have," he added coyly.
Red Bull's Vettel, seemingly matching his Mercedes-powered rival as he ran second to Button for most of the 58-lap race, suspects the Brawn driver's hint is indeed true.
"I have the feeling they (Brawn) were playing with us," the German told Auto Motor und Sport.
An unnamed Brawn team figure is quoted by Britain's Guardian newspaper as also suggesting the Brackley camp did not display its full pace throughout the 2009 season opening race weekend.
"It is just foolish to just annihilate people all the time," he said. "I think we have a little bit in the bag. We've got good stuff coming and I think we have reason to be confident," he said.