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It is expensive running a Formula One team these days and unless you are bankrolled by a billionaire or wealthy Middle East investors it can be hard for an independent team to make ends meet.

Despite leading the World Championship there is a distinct lack of sponsors on the mostly white Brawn GP cars so to raise some funds they are having a bit of a clear out, seeing what junk they can find lying around the factory and flogging it at auction.

Bonhams auction house will be selling a number of old Honda and BAR cars at the Silverstone Classic on 25 July including a chassis that was driven by Jenson Button to finish third in the 2006 Malaysian Grand Prix at Sepang.

Brawn CEO, Nick Fry said:

Brawn GP is extremely proud of our heritage with British American Tobacco and Honda, and we have inherited a vast collection of historic race cars and memorabilia from the team’s early years. We are delighted to be able to give collectors and our fans the opportunity to share in our history and purchase some fantastic items, including actual race cars, through this unique sale.

None of the cars have engines or gearboxes but even so the estimates look strangely affordable.  A show car will set you back £7000 – £10,000, while you can get one that Jenson Button himself raced for under £20,000.

I don’t know where I would put it but I am almost tempted to place a bid.

Codemasters will be releasing their new Formula One video game for Wii and PSP later this year, followed by versions for PS3, XBox 360 and PC in 2010, but if you just can’t wait that long Brawn GP have released their own racing game for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Imaginatively called Brawn GP Racing, it is the first Formula One game for the iPhone and iPod Touch and is available from the iTunes App Store.

The game also ties in with a competition where you can win a Mercedes SL, the idea being that the faster your lap time the more competition entries you get.

The game only features one track at the moment; a strange circuit somewhere in central London featuring every famous London landmark the developers could pack in.  As you scream around what might be Hyde Park, everything from Tower Bridge and the London Eye to Big Ben and Buckingham Palace slides past.

More tracks will be added throughout 2009 supposedly inspired by real circuits like Silverstone, Monza and Monaco.  There is also a news section and a gallery where you can save pictures to use as wallpaper.

The game itself is mildly amusing.  The graphics are quite nice and the car sounds good but the handling is tricky.  It seems to drive more like a BMW than a Brawn.  I found the car either understeering off one side of the track or oversteering off the other.  There is an auto-acceleration mode but strangely it doesn’t also auto-brake so it is of dubious help.

With only one track at the moment, £2.39 seems a bit steep but I guess if you win a Mercedes SL the game will have paid for itself…

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Like the nose of a WWII bomber, the welcome sign at the Brawn GP factory in Brackley has a tally of victories the team has notched up so far this season.

They’re not being overconfident, though — there are nine races left this year but only space on the board for another six wins, at least not without adding a second row.

But Brawn GP are not the only Formula One team with a connection to airplane nose art.

In World War I, Francesco Baracca was Italy’s top fighter ace scoring 34 kills. In recognition of his former cavalry regiment, Baracca adopted the embem of a prancing stallion — the Cavallino Rampante — and he became known as ‘The Cavalier of the Skies’.

After the war, Enzo Ferrari won a race in Ravenna where he met Baracca’s mother, the Countess Paolina.  Legend has it that the Countess asked Ferrari to use the prancing horse on his cars saying it would bring him good luck, as Enzo himself explains:

The horse was painted on the fuselage of the fighter plane flown by Francesco Baracca, a heroic Italian pilot who died on Mount Montello: the Italian ace of aces of the First World War. In 1923 … I met Count Enrico Baracca, the pilot’s father, and subsequently his mother, Countess Paolina. One day she said to me, “Ferrari, why don’t you put my son’s prancing horse on your cars; it would bring you luck.” … The horse was black and has remained so; I added the canary yellow background because it is the colour of Modena.

Ever since then the Cavallino Rampante has been the symbol of the Scuderia.

Jenson Button claimed his third pole position of the year in Saturday’s qualifying for the Spanish Grand Prix.

Starting his final flying lap just seconds before the end of the session, Button set a lap time of 1:20.527, a tenth of a second faster than second place man Sebastian Vettel.

Button’s team mate, Rubens Barrichello, will start from third on the grid alongside Felipe Massa which should warm some cockles back at Maranello.

Kimi Raikkonen was driving the new ‘Superleggera’ version of the F60, which gave him 10kg more ballast weight to play with but while both the Red Cars were quick in practice an error in strategy saw Raikkonen being dropped in the first qualifying session.

In a repeat of Malaysia, Ferrari thought Kimi’s time would be enough to get him through to the second qualifying session and so decided not to send him out again.  As it turned out he was 2 tenths slower than Sebastien Buemi and will start way back on the eighth row of the grid.

Still, it does look like Ferrari have made significant improvement since Bahrain and Raikkonnen is confident the team can improve further:

We are still a bit behind, I would say, but it’s much stronger than it was before.  It’s only the first step, so we can get some more for the next races. After that, for sure we can catch them up even if it takes a little while.

I don’t know if we can tomorrow or not, but in the later races we can definitely fight for wins, podiums and good positions.

As expected, the McLarens of Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen performed poorly and only managed 14th and 18th, respectively.

2009 Spanish Grand Prix Qualifying Results

Image: Brawn GP

Jenson Button and Brawn GP have dominated the start of the 2009 Formula One season, winning three out of the four races so far.  If you listen to Renault’s Flavio Briatore that is almost entirely down to a ‘unique’ interpretation of the rules but since the FIA declared double-decker diffusers legal all the ‘non-diffuser’ teams have been working hard to redesign the back of their cars.

After the flyaway races in the East, the Spanish Grand Prix marks the start of the European tour and most teams will be bringing significant car updates to the Circuit de Catalunya this weekend.  These updates, and the fact that the drivers and teams know the track backwards from winter testing, should make for a close race on Sunday.

One of only three teams to use KERS this season, BMW have abandoned the device for Spain in favour of a comprehensive aerodynamic update.  Team boss Mario Theissen said:

We will not be equipping either cars with KERS in Barcelona.  It was a case of lining up with either a comprehensive aerodynamic update or KERS.  The tuning time on Friday would be too short.

I’m not sure why they can’t run KERS with the new aero update but BMW will be hoping it brings an improvement to their apalling start to the season.

Now that in-season testing is banned, the teams face a new problem when developing their cars this year.  Previously, teams could run many miles testing new aero packages before racing them.  This year it won’t be until they take to the track in Friday practice that they will know if any new parts are successful. Toro Rosso’s chief engineer, Laurent Mekies:

Obviously we don’t have testing now so we have to understand how the upgrade suits the direction we have taken so far.  Does it push in the same direction or does it ask us to reconsider some of the choices we have made already?

McLaren already made significant improvement in Bahrain with Lewis Hamilton wringing the most out of the MP4-24 to finish fourth and so will not be bringing anything special to Spain.  The Barcelona track is unlikely to suit the McLaren but Hamilton remains hopeful of another strong finish:

We won’t have the bigger upgrades of some of the other teams as we already introduced several new parts during the opening flyaways, so it will be interesting to see where we sit in the order. Nevertheless, the engineers are optimistic that our new diffuser and front wing will once again help us to make progress towards the front of the grid.

Currently fourth in the Constructors’ Championship, McLaren will be hoping for a stronger performance at Barcelona than they displayed there in winter testing.

Image: Brawn GP