1. They had a large performance lead in 2009 that they shouldn't have started to lose completely by half season. They should certainly have carried it into 2010.
2. They were gifted 100 million by Honda, and once it became clear they had a car that could win the championship Bernie promised them upfront TV money.
3. With this money they ended up as the richest team on the grid at the end of 2009:
http://adamcooperf1.com/2010/09/14/braw ... t-in-2009/
4. They were carrying a lot of money to do whatever they wanted for 2010, and what's more, they knew this money was coming long before the 2009 season ended.
5. The directors made themselves very, very rich.
6. Mercedes and Michael Schumacher walked in because they thought they were on to a winner.
The downtrodden, 'we have no staff, we needed to lay everyone off' image of Brawn that Mercedes somehow inadvertently bought through no fault of their own is just complete crap. The team as an organisation is simply no good, and they've proved that ever since Tyrrell was no more.
Comparisons with Red Bull are even more laughable. Red Bull showed progress from the disaster of Jaguar in all of their years right up to 2009, and 2008 if you count the Torro Rosso which was basically a Red Bull car. Red Bull have also never been in a position where they started winning races and then fell backwards at a massive rate of knots. You've then got Sauber, Force India with the same car and Lotus with their genuine financial problems all outperforming Mercedes now where the team should have no staffing or financial problems whatsoever - not that they ever existed.
There are no excuses for this farcical tin-pot outfit. None.
) And went and got the next best available.
