Brawn, Button and Barrichello's stunning clean sweep

40

March 29, sixteen years ago, saw one of the genuine shockers of modern Formula 1.

The new Brawn GP team clinched a 1-2 victory in the 2009 Formula 1 world championship season opener in Australia.

By rights, the team shouldn't even have been in Melbourne. It had previously been the Honda works squad until the Japanese manufacturer abruptly ended its involvement in F1 at the end of 2008.

Team principal Ross Brawn led a management buy-out to keep the team going. He was also seeking a way to keep the doors open long term and he realised that the best way of finding a buyer for the team was to have a successful 2009.

And it couldn't have got off to a better start when Jenson Button clinched pole position on Saturday. His team mate Rubens Barrichello made it a Brawn lock-out on the starting grid.

24 hours later, the pair held on to their positions to finish first and second in the Grand Prix. The race finished under a safety car after a crash between Red Bull's Sebastian Vettel and Sauber's Robert Kubica. Jarno Trulli picked up the final podium spot in what was his 200th Grand Prix start.

It was the first time a constructor has taken pole and gone on to clinch victory in its maiden race since Mercedes-Benz' bow in France in 1954. Button went on to win five more races on his way to the title, and Barrichello claimed two more wins for Brawn.

The team duly won the 2009 constructors championship. It was also awarded the 2010 Laureus World Sports Award for Team of the Year. The triumphant squad was then bought by its engine suppliers Mercedes-Benz, who went on to have some small measure of success themselves in coming seasons.

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.