NOT BRAWN'S IDEA! The Story of the Double Diffuser Concept (2008-2010)

In the 2009 season, the Brawn GP team went and dominated the opening portion of the season, setting Jenson Button up for his world title.
But part of the secret to Brawn's success was a revolutionary concept that exploited a rather glaring hole in the rule book that allowed them the potential of creating more downforce in an area that was set up in the same rule book to produce less.
And while Brawn profited the most off this, it wasn't actually the team, or even Ross's idea. The idea came as intelligence transfer happened during the 2008 season following the demise of Super Aguri.
Enjoy! And remember to like and subscribe for more!
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[@captaintoyota3171]

09 was a great story for the employees of the honda/brawn team. Honda built 2 cars for 09 for development. Brawn convinced honda to pay 100mill in payroll etc to keep team alive. So brawn and fry kept it alive to end up with a highly developed honda chassis with merc engine stuffed into it. Luckily far enough ahead to beat Red Bull who where catching up. Such a great title to win when you thought ur job was gone then to have the best car after years of floundering. Feel good story.

[@gandalf_thegrey]

My favourite video quote of yours is still: "The rules say how big my diffusor can be... but not how many I can have" I'm so glad we speaking about this again :D

[@AidanMillward]

Toyota did try to run a triple at one point.

[@marcnobel3938]

@@AidanMillward 3 - Like all good things in life.

[@TehMehKehIen]

My favorite part about the double diffuser is how both Brawn (team) and Toyota have said years later that it wasn't that big of a deal, yet the media painted it (and still does) as this 1 sec per lap key to the success invention, when it actually was closer to 2 tenths, maybe 3 per lap. The key for the 09 season was the outwash front wing, which Mclaren (for example) didn't get until the German GP.

[@reptongeek]

The 2009 season is still my favourite F1 season because of the underdog story. Still to this day, I can't quite believe Jenson Button is a F1 World Champion Another interesting fact about the double diffuser. Rubens' was broken on Lap 1 but he still finished second following the Vettel-Kubica crash that caused the first Safety Car finish since 1999 (another favourite season of mine)

[@WinWin-oo4uk]

Well Jenson Button is still the last F1 driver to win in a constructor Honda team back in 2006.

[@fabio1826]

Great video as always Aidan, to add more to the Hamilton-Button fun facts: Both won the championship with a Mercedes powered car, and both raced the N°1 Vodafone McLaren the following year.

[@AidanMillward]

Think I was happier about JB winning it tho. 🤣

[@potatogirlcultist19]

The also clinched their championships by finishing 5th place at Brazil. Very odd coincedence indeed, especially considering that #22 would usually be assigned to a backmarker team.

[@MsZeeZed]

Bonus Fact: as you mentioned car number 22, Brawn GP only had 22 & 23 because they weren’t called Honda and so had to be placed behind Force India on the pit lane. Force India already had marketing material with them as # 20 & 21 so no team was 18 & 19 on the 2009 grid. Button of course took his title winning 22 when F1 numbers became personal in 2014 and Hamilton picked 44 because it was his karting number.

[@f1help613]

I love these storytime videos. The quality only keeps going up. Killing it

[@AidanMillward]

Mistakes creep in to most of them tho. Need to sort that out.

[@f1help613]

@@AidanMillward It's only natural, but it's bately noticeable and I've been watching you for about 3 years. I make mistakes in my videos too, but I'm a noob so I can't really compare

[@SabotageDesigns]

@@AidanMillward we are all human mate

[@kcmulligan383]

Mmmn.. .m. M Jmjmmn Mmmñ. M

[@ES90344]

I miss Super Bestfriends, they were one of my favorite bottom level teams in the late '00.

[@lightfeather9953]

Never knew about the Japanese engineer translating the rules story. Really cool!

[@harz1994]

Building up on your fact stated at 12:36, there are other similarities between Hamiltons and Buttons championships. 1. On both occasions they finished 5th in Brazil. 2. They both drove British chassis with Mercedes engines. 3. On both occasions, Vettel finished 4th with the number 15 on the car, despite driving for 2 different teams. 4. The main rival was a Brazilian driver who qualified on pole. 5. Car number 5 finished 2nd. 6. Car number 1 finished 3rd. 7. Car number 9 crashed out on the first lap.

[@amitanshthakur5261]

Never knew that it all started in '07 with Super Aguri😳 Great to learn that and awesome video!

[@areasquirrel]

People often forget or newcomers are not aware that 3 teams came up with this, so Brawn couldn't possibly have been THE mastermind. To be fair, he never claimed to be. Good old interpretation. One continuous line. Never said it had to be a straight line. Boom. Two mini devices at the rear instead of one. Because Williams and Toyota - Williams running Toyota engines - also had these, yet Brawn was the big winner with Mercedes engines, I have long been tempted to give Mercedes the credit for the title win, and can't help but imagine that had it still been a Honda engine, given the state they were in back then, they would have been rooted to the back of the grid. Meanwhile, Red Bull may have swept to glory instead with another Newey rocket, the double diffuser may have been consigned to the scrapheap as a crackpot idea, the aero direction of the sport for the next decade may have been different, and maybe even the Mercedes era may never have happened. Quite the Honda shaped butterfly. That consecutive year stat gets crazier the longer it gets. English driver, car no. 22, British team, Mercedes engine, Bridgestone tyres, sealed the title by finishing 5th in Brazil, a race in which the previous year's champion whom they unseated finished 3rd. Mad. McLaren falling so hard with the changes was schadenfreude for those who hated Brazil the previous year. After 'FeLiPe wAs RoBbeD', seeing Hamilton at the back was so satisfying. Especially to see the British media's new darling suffer. The flipside is that the guy they had written off as past it and having blown his chance as The Great British Hope™, swept away by the young buck, replaced the young buck as champion - a poke in the eye to them. This redemption coupled with Jenson's latter years at McLaren, funnily enough, served to wake me up to how good he really was. I had bought into the 'playboy' myth around him for a while, until his early success with Honda power in the BAR made it clear that that unfair image was just Briatore BS cooked up to justify booting him out for his golden boy Alonso, whose own title success allowed Flavio to get away with that particular dick move. Jenson was better and classier than I gave him credit for, and that season - two teams who had never contested the championship before, with three out of their four drivers also having not done so, slugging it out - is one for the ages. Better than the following year and better than 2021 in that it was a title battle with no bad blood. Proof that such a thing was possible in the 21st Century. Who'd have thunk it?

[@sammerry7706]

Underrated comment. 09 is the reason i love f1 to this day, webbers win is the first race i remember being on my feet yelling like a cheerleader

[@sgsheff]

I'm glad you mentioned the working group talking about the loophole. Ross Brawn and others warned the other teams in the working group that a double diffuser could be made because of the loophole in the regulations long before any engineers even got their hands on the final regs.

[@MsZeeZed]

Indeed Ross Brawn (working for Honda) openly told the F1 technical working group several times in 2008 about the loophole, but he wasn’t believed specifically by Ferrari & Renault. Something he publicly used in his team’s defense later. At pre-season testing the Brawn team took pains to hide their front wing area to delay any accurate protest of the diffuser. That season there were also the small matters of Massa’s serious head injury, Webber’s first Red Bull wins and Vettel blowing-up his Renault engines regularly in the final races that let the practically penniless Brawn team coast to driver & constructors titles on just 3 chassis. They also only had about 3 front wings available until Barcelona (race 5), so Button’s notoriously smooth driving is what allowed him to take the driver’s title with the very fast, but not repairable, BGP-001-02.

[@chrisdavidson911]

Did Brawn actually tell people what the loophole was? I remember him saying - when i read his book at least - that he'd said they'd recovered most of the lost downforce - and that it fell on deaf ears - but i can't remember him giving the entire game away.

[@jsquared1013]

The front wing hiding wasn't just mis-direction, they were one of the first to figure out the benefits of out-washing front wing design.

[@daspaud88]

Nice stuff Aidan. Never knew Super Aguri played such a role in this

[@shitoryu8]

I know way more about motorsport now because of this channel. Stuff I would of never found out about, not as easily atleast.

[@davidparker8221]

I find your videos are entertaining, insightful and enlightening. You may label them as "low tech" , but I find your drawings here are more effective than the broadcast efforts during the coverage I was able to watch back in the day. So, despite your lack of licensed photos or videos, you do a better job! If I had money to provide, you'd probably have another Patreon Patron (and after 18 months of Pandemic and job loss way back due to 9/11, I don't!) If I may provide a recommendation for a future video (somewhat related to this story and the USAC, CART, to IRL issues) the 1980-83 Dan Gurney A.A.R. Eagle (Especially the 1981 Eagle/"Pepsi Challenger) It had similar aero design engineering that F 1 used in the early 2000's but obviously 20 years earlier (and in American open wheel.) It may have escaped your notice, but the story is right in your wheelhouse!

[@MrMiD.Life.Crisis]

hi there Aidan buddy, hope you're well. just wanted to say that I love the channel! ive got so many videos to catch up on - but your videos are some of the only on KZbin that fly by far too quickly, so im very much looking forward to seeing what you've been up to! I don't mean that I think that you should change the length or anything, I think it's more that you should know how engaging they are! keep plugging away mate. there will come a tipping point sometime in the next year/year and a half where the subscription count will go up in chunks for a while so keep pushing, please! I think i speak for the majority of us watching when I say that you are now a permanent feature/fixture in our lives and we love the topics you cover, the breakdown for those that don't know/remember a particular situation/moment and also your summing up. basically, its a big thank you from me mate. you're an absolute legend and we love ya! 👍👍👍👍👍👍

[@ManWithBeard1990]

You know, this reminds me a lot of that one time that a Formula One team built a rear wing the functionally had three elements, but also had diagonal fins arranged in such a way that no cross-section of the rear wing had more than two separate parts. In fact if memory serves, that might also have been Honda, a couple of years earlier.

[@DuncaR]

Sounds intriguing, can you find / share any links?

[@Olivyay]

Interesting video, I didn't know about the Super Aguri connection! It all makes sense. The 2009 season was very fun to watch despite Brawn really dominating the first part of it. McLaren's comeback in the second part of the year after having initially produced a dog of a car was also exciting.

[@Gnrnrvids]

This channel is criminally under-subscribed.

[@apophisstr6719]

Imagine the level of goosebumps the couple of engineers had when they're discussing about this loophole with the dd design.

[@RageousMode]

Flavio Briatore was quoted as saying they'd run a condominium diffuser when asked about the increasing size all the teams were pushing

[@chrisdavidson911]

The last to first development race McLaren had gets completely forgotten about when people talk about this season

[@pererik6731]

Thanks for yet another great video. Yes, I know it's 6 months old, but I've only recently found your channel so I'm working my way trough everything a couple of videos a day.

[@fucatypr]

They should make this into a movie

[@DieselDan09]

I 100 percent agree

[@gdogg3710]

The first and second blown diffuser eras in F1 show you more than anything else just how dramatically people’s command of aerodynamics had come on…1994 even people like Adrian Newey could be thwarted by banning running your exhaust pipes down to the diffuser…by the start of the 2010’s he’d figured out how to seemingly get exhaust gasses to the diffuser by magic…

[@RACECAR]

I mean, they didn't say you couldn't use magic (or Sorcery or Alchemy for that matter). Just waiting for that one designer that manages to work one of those two eventually.

[@bocahdongo7769]

Thanks to better computational power of CFD

[@Steamy_ray_vaughan]

Absolutely love these history ones!

[@DieselDan09]

I have been waiting for this one!!! This was the year I really got into f1!

[@irishben15]

Just discovered this channel and it's already one of my favourite F1 channels. Good luck for the future bro 👍

[@seansedor3192]

Really good video! Enjoyed learning more about the history of the double diffuser.

[@666okano]

Always enjoy a good story time Aidan, thankyou

[@zolimajster8313]

this piece is so absolutely cool

[@davidciesielski8251]

I can't thank you enough!!

[@harshithsadhana7475]

what an amazing story. bring us more like this

[@pranc236]

I thought this story was going back to 94’. I was wrong again. Great story time!

[@AidanMillward]

Benetton was playing with an on throttle blown diffuser at that time, apparently.

[@pranc236]

@@AidanMillward u right. Got them confused. They are kinda close but very different.

[@AdLamb]

As a British F1 fan, we were truly spoilt in 2008 & 2009.

[@9176michael]

Great video, as always

[@fam.hunger5244]

One fact is that Double Diffuser is nothing but a modification of the Ferrari F2005 diffuser, which was a Rory Byrne idea. The Double Diffuser is practically exactly the same except that the underbody has been opened up, making this concept much more effective. Whether Ross had the idea or not (in fact it is said to have been a Honda engineer, although it has to be said that Ross would only have had to take a concept he was very familiar with one step further...) it is a fact that the Double Diffuser had its origin in Rory Byrne's diffuser of the F2005 and F248.

[@ElsinoreRacer]

Senna's death made following F1 too melancholy for me for years. But I sort of followed Honda things and became aware of the Brawn drama before the season started. Watched the opener and never stopped. Thanks Ross. Thanks Jenson and Rubio. Side note: I had a daughter teaching in Brazil that year. I told her two things. One, to ask people how it was for them when Senna died, and to go to the Brazilian GP. The 1st ended with them saying it was too sad to talk about, or very happy to know an American was curious. She went to the GP and said standing amongst 100,000 people in the rain during qualifying chanting "RUBIO, RUBIO" was amazing. Good girl, that.

[@LolixLP]

Super Aguri being the GOATs they were meant to be.

[@terryloweh]

Brawn GP was like the Leicester City of EPL

[@andyholmes7901]

I love the amount of research you put into your videos. And I loved that season, though I thought the cars were very ugly (the Leicester of F1).

[@y_fam_goeglyd]

The other thing about Lewis & JB winning the championship with the same number is that they both won in Brazil, in 5th position (and started from the same one???? Could well be misremembering that). It was almost a carbon copy. Great races, both of them :D And the _particularly_ brilliant thing about Lewis's win was that it was a boot the arse to Herr Moseley!

[@Olivyay]

I seem to remember that Jenson started the Brazil 09 race way back in the field after massive rain in qualifying messed with his attempts (and Vettel's and Hamilton's), so not in the same starting position I'm afraid.

[@y_fam_goeglyd]

​@@OlivyayThank you. I'm always ready to be corrected!

[@blacktoothfox677]

I actually LOVED that Toyota in 09. I was, as per the norm, well off the mark when I predicted they would be battling BMW for the championship that year! I did not see the whole Red Bull / Brawn battle coming at all. I really thought that BMW & Toyota were gonna dominate - it really, really looked like it that winter! Might be my favourite season of the 21st century so far - along with '03 & '04. Defo one of the peaks in my whole F1 experience (Keke was my first fave - he scared me as an 8 year old kid at Brands hatch at the GP that year, ruffled my hair really roughly! haha! No joke!) - but as i WAS WAFFLING - I reckon 03, 04n - those epic epic battles, Kimi, The Michael, and the wildcard Juan pablo, with an up-&-coming Alonso starting to push to the front - man, those seasons were something else. You never knew who was gonna produce the best art at aeach race - coz thats what it was - ART. Creative driving, tough, fair, aggressive without being over the line, I ADORED that, defo one of the peaks. Hakkinen, Prost, Lauda my all-time faves. I tweeted you the Mansell interview the night it was dropped - hope you had the chance to hear it - really, really insightful. Hope the arm is better. Maybe see you at Cobra. Bless you Aidan.

[@philipcaseyacalloway204]

The story of the Brawn team is incredible. Pissed off a lot of teams and the FIA? Sign me up.

[@An.Individual]

Wish he would explain the "hole" in the regulations that Brawn found

[@minibus9]

great video.

[@SirGingerOfKnight]

as mentioned near the end, the 2009 is definitely a season I go back and watch at least once a year

[@WinWin-oo4uk]

How do you watch it?

[@SirGingerOfKnight]

I PVR'd them in windows media center as a student

[@WinWin-oo4uk]

@@SirGingerOfKnight Did you get Friday Practice and Saturday Qualifying

[@SirGingerOfKnight]

@@WinWin-oo4uk nah just races - I believe there is a reddit thread somewhere you can get any season you want back to about 1983

[@WinWin-oo4uk]

@@SirGingerOfKnight reddit deletes alot of threads.

[@vandalsgarage]

The double diffuser was allowed, because the FIA liked the underdog story. Ironic, considering the teams history over the next 20 years.

[@lilithhiddenvillain5086]

I wish I could have been a fly on the wall at the Ferrari garage when Button won that first race.

[@doginu]

As Steve Matchett would call them "Super Best Friends"

[@regen9918]

Some other similarities between Hamilton and Button's championships. Both won the title in a British chassis with a Mercedes engine by finishing 5th place at the Brazilian GP and both were up against a Brazilian driver in the championship

[@RomanShopa]

I keep being confused why F1 fans undermine Takuma Sato - 2-time Indy 500 champion (!) - so much. His performance during 2007 Canadian GP was as remarkable as bad Super Aguri was. He's just a really great driver.

[@AidanMillward]

Funny part is the two Indy 500s Tak won were the two Alonso qualified for. I guess he’s had the last laugh. Beating the sp called best of his generation at the so called easiest race on the world. 🤣

[@dicknodnfs]

I remember Steve Matchett on US TV trying his best to explain this, and he could sort the sporting regulations very well. Include his colleagues in the paddock and then watching the Braun beating Mclaren and Ferrari reminded me of the Alan Kulwicki story.

[@DjDolHaus86]

My reference plane is an SR71

[@SK_bombardiers]

Have you done a video on the blown diffusers?

[@fnafboy-fnafgirlssistercar685]

Of course not remember the noise on shumis car that senna mistaked for traction control it was the diffuser it apparently a predecessor to the double diffuser

[@km6832]

No matter how many vids i watch i still cant understand how this works

[@dallywoop6361]

“So brawn ran what Honda would have brought for the 2009 season” not quite, wind tunnel photos of the 2009 Honda show a much more radical concept, more like a 2010 car than a 2009 car. It also had much much tighter packaging, so it may have been as fast or faster than the brawn but reliability was a concern, and the Honda engine may not have been as developed as the merc. 6 of one half a dozen of the other.

[@Cigar2]

Super Best Friends.....

[@amaccama3267]

350 quid for an image? FUCK !!!

[@AidanMillward]

The Alamy once are decently priced, but still only buy one at a time. But, you know, people gotta make their money.

[@aydankhaliq2967]

Aidan, may we have the name of the intro music?

[@rainergumpert5945]

We can sum up these little banters as: lobbyism Yes its there! ;)

[@felipeknop]

I remember this story that all the non-DD teams participated in the overtake working group to agree in the 2009 rules. So they designed for the spirit of the rules. And the other 3 teams designed for the letter of the rules. Is that true?

[@deborahpriestley4739]

Give the video an like!

[@X8X8X8X8X8X8X8X8X8X]

5:22 100 million quid, I assume?

[@fearghus66]

Can you do a story about how Toyota entered F1?

[@AnIdiotAboard_]

Umm nothing on the BGP01 was brawns idea was it? Didnt honda like run the team right up till they kinda didnt? and for the 2nd time, they pulled out and went on to win the title the following year under another name. and for the 3rd time they pulled out and went on to win the title the following year under another name.... Honda are good at pulling out and getting a baby

[@AidanMillward]

Brawn (the team rather than the guy) gets all the credit when Honda did all the work.

[@brianpack5479]

Was Super Aguri's title sponsor ever anything? What was SS United? Google just gives multiple copies of the wikipedia article.

[@AidanMillward]

Not sure. Somethign about how they never paid up, I dunno.

[@thelegend5243]

Jenson button only won the title because he had a superior car! By the time the other teams caught up it was already too late, The author of the video even says this himself

[@felipesantossomavilla2320]

Jenson managed very well the advantage obtained in the first races.

[@thelegend5243]

@@felipesantossomavilla2320 Anyone on the grid would have won the title in his car that season. The brawns Finishe 1-2 in the championship and won the constructors, they says it all. Where’s Buttons titles without a superior car?

[@felipesantossomavilla2320]

@@thelegend5243 Vettel was actually 2nd in that championship. The second part of the season the dominant car was the RB. Barrichello was only 3rd.

[@cristianodionisi4492]

Aiden what's your opinion on Bodo/Glimt?

[@AidanMillward]

What's one of those?

[@gurito4374]

@@AidanMillward AS Roma got beat by a Norwegian football team, for scale, the annual budget of AS Roma is ~350 000 000 euro, while Bodø/Glimt is ~9 000 000 euro

[@enemyofthedeepstate5978]

......and I still don't know what the double defuser was. Except that it was bigger 😝

[@fablodibongo1150]

what importance had Ross Brawn in the writing of the regulations about the double diffuser?

[@AidanMillward]

None, as far as I can tell. The FIA wrote the 2009 rule book but left this massive hole in the rules that Toyota, Williams and Honda all exploited. But Brawn (team rather than guy) gets all the credit for it.

[@MrCourty89]

"give the video an like 👍"....ok lol

[@eamonahern7495]

Hey comment section! Is Aidan aware that, because the letter L isn't a vowel, he can say "a like" rather than "an like"?

[@F-Man]

Ya know who would have driven a few double-diffuser cars? Roberto Moreno.

[@AidanMillward]

Yeah, well, he didn't.

[@F-Man]

@@AidanMillward Uhh, not so sure about that. Have a look at that Jordan 191 👀

[@seancassidy795]

These last 25k subs are really killing me. I'm probably just going to lose my shit once 100k is hit.

[@stevenmacdonald9619]

22 + 22 is also 44

[@crusherbmx]

More silly bonus facts....'62,63,'64,'65...all British, English, Scottish English, Scottish.....ALSO 2014, 2015....the first time an English driver winning back to back titles....then of course he did 4 in a row later on....and no driver has a 3 champioship run....oh wait, now I'm way off topic....

[@tommydepoorter4864]

nah

[@kevinprior3549]

2008 cars looked like insects not cars

[@cosmostrek2001]

brawn was at least 7 time world champ before he created brawn. he also created mercedes. this is why no matter how you change the rules haas aston martin alpha and the other alpha. they will never win anything. including alpine