Job losses announced by GP winners Brawn

LONDON: Australian Grand Prix sensation Brawn GP are to make redundant around 270 employees, a third of their staff, in order to cut costs, chief executive Nick Fry has said.

He was speaking shortly after the new team had stunned the world of motorsport by placing one-two in Melbourne on Sunday through Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello.

"It's very unfortunate that we've got to do that but it's the change of technical regulations and obviously we are now a private team," Fry told the BBC.

"We are about 700 people at the moment and we talked to the staff about going down to about 430, something like that, which is where we [predecessors BAR] were in 2004."

Brawn GP were hastily formed in early March from the ashes of the long-standing Honda team, who decided to quit Grand Prix racing faced with escalating costs.

Initially most employees stayed to help rebuild a fresh team and that decision was vindicated in Melbourne where Brawn GP dominated from start to finish in what was the most successful Grand Prix debut by a team for 55 years.

But Honda's estimated 2008 budget was far higher than Brawn are operating on this year following the recent rules changes aimed at cutting costs.

Fry said that staff at Brawn's Brackley factory in England had been informed and redundancy letters had gone out in mid-March.