FORMULA ONE

• Brawn appointed Honda team principal

  
  

  London, England (Sports Network) - Ross Brawn, one of the architects of Ferrari's most recent rise to greatness in Formula One, will become Honda's team principal next year.

  Brawn left Ferrari at the end of 2006 to take a sabbatical.

  "I am very excited to be joining the Honda Racing F1 Team, said Brawn. "Honda has a proud heritage in Formula One and the opportunity to help the team to realize its potential represents a fantastic new challenge for me in the sport.

  "The team has already done a great job of giving due consideration to its future and has spent a good deal of time putting in place both people and first class engineering resources to achieve its ambitions. I look forward to working alongside what I know to be some very talented people and helping Honda to rediscover its winning ways." Brawn began his F1 career working at Williams, but his career took off when he joined forces with Michael Schumacher in 1991 at Benetton. They won back-to- back driver titles in 1994 and 1995 and a constructors championship in 1995. Both jumped to Ferrari in 1996.

  Ferrari and Schumacher won driver titles from 2000 through 2004 and the team won constructor championships every year between 1999 and 2004, its first since 1983.

  When Brawn announced his sabbatical last fall, it was expected that he would return to the team when he was ready to work again.

  11/12 15:35:15 ET