At 67 and 68 years old respectively, Ross Brawn and Pat Symonds have announced that the 2021 Formula 1 season will be their last full season before stepping back sometime in 2022.
Formula 1 discovered by surprise in 2009 a technical novelty that altered the established order: the double diffuser, an invention of the Brawn GP team that, with its top manager at the helm, Ross Brawn, helped them win both titles after astonishing everyone since pre-season training in Jerez de la Frontera.
The BGP 001, with Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello at the helm, ended up leading by 18.5 points to a Red Bull powered by Renault before shelving the project in style and giving rise to the structure that, today, is Mercedes .
In front of Mercedes Until his departure from the team at the end of 2013, Brawn remained, who returned to F1 in 2017 but with a totally different objective and role, that of sportingly directing a premier category of motorsport that, in full control of his former team, swapped Bernie Ecclestone for Liberty Media.
Goodbye to a time
Along with Chase Carey and Sean Bratches, Brawn altered the established paradigm to date with the approach of introducing numerous changes in Formula 1 to make it more spectator-friendly and favor the spectacle.
Shows in the civic centers of the most important cities of the planet they preceded ideas like the present classification to sprint or, his greatest work before retiring, the regulatory revolution which was to be established in 2021 and which was finally postponed to 2022.
From his hand came precisely Pat symonds to manage the technical department of F1, a fundamental pillar in the glorious years of Renault that triumphed in 2005 and 2006 together with Fernando Alonso, with whom he worked at Benetton.
And now that?
Just as Chase Carey left his position as F1 president to Stefano Domenicali at the end of 2020, Brawn and Symonds will have to do the same in the coming months. At the moment, the category has published a document regarding the future developments of the organization in which both exits are discussed, with the final date to be defined.
Waiting to meet the successors of both, the employees who worked with Symonds in the technical department, mostly former managers of Formula 1 teams, will become FIA workers.
The main interest now of both the FIA and F1 is to divide responsibilities and ensure that no team or manager influences future decisions of this scale, thus advocating for a fair and equitable sport.