What Brawn GP Never Revealed About Their F1 Miracle: Ex-CEO Nick Fry (E420)

**Damian Harmon** (0:00)
Before we get into today's episode, a massive thank you to Apple Podcasts for including High Performance in their 2026 Creators We Love campaign. If you've just found the show, welcome. Nice to have you with us. Head to Apple Podcasts to see mine and Damian's favorite episodes from the last six years of High Performance.

**Nick Fry** (0:18)
Ross and I met our Japanese boss on the verge of tears.

**Damian Harmon** (0:23)
And I don't think that anyone really understands the Brawn story until this conversation.

**Nick Fry** (0:26)
Honda's confirmed they're pulling out a Formula 1

**Damian Harmon** (0:29)
So, Melbourne, 2009, almost no testing. Turning up with an engine that you didn't even have just a few weeks before. Cobbled together enough stuff to get the cars out on the track. You finished first and second.

**Nick Fry** (0:39)
There were endless areas where the thing could have gone off the rails.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:45)
Here comes Jenson Button, the 2009 World Champion.

**Damian Harmon** (0:50)
The very Formula 1 thing you bought for a pound then sold was recently valued at $6 billion. Is there any part of you that now looks and thinks, I wish I had kept hold of that team?
Let's go then to the moment that you had to lead in a way you'd never led before. I know this is a particularly interesting point for you when we looked at Nick's story.

**Jake Humphrey** (1:12)
Yeah, the 28th of November 2008 at the Renaissance Hotel just outside of Heathrow. Will you take us into that room?

**Nick Fry** (1:20)
It was clearly going to be not the easiest situation. I mean, Ross and I had prepared for a significant budget cuts. Honda dealers were refusing to take cars. They were going to close down the plant in Swindon in the UK for a short period of time which turned into a long period of time, which turned down, eventually it was closed down.
So we knew the situation was going to be very difficult. So we had prepared for maybe 50 percent, 40-50 percent and we'd map that out. I have to say we weren't expecting them to say what they did say.
The Relaisance Hotel, which is still there, is not the most luxurious hotel, let's say, at Heathrow Airport. We arrived and met our Japanese boss who took us into a very small room, an uncomfortably small room almost. There were the three of us and Ross is a fairly big lad. We were sitting there uncomfortably close to our boss, who literally was on the verge of tears and explains that they couldn't go on doing Formula 1 because the things I've just mentioned, and it wasn't the right thing for them to do. They had bigger things to worry about, and they were going to have to stop. For Honda, which has got this just unbelievable history in Formula 1, it clearly was from the hearts. I mean, he was clearly desperately upset. Then we were asked to move into the room next door, and it was a bit like a assassination squad. There was sort of Ross and myself and a big table with probably 20 Honda people from various parts of the world, who said, look, we repeated the story and there were their HR experts and this, that, and the other, and it was literally, and in my, this is not my first Rodeo, as I say, in America. I worked for Ford for a very long period of time. I ran Aston Martin and we had difficult times there. So, I'm not a beginner, and they somehow seem to think that we should go back to the factory and tell 700 people to go home and turn the lights off. And I think under those situations, you've either got two options really, haven't you? One is you say, yes, thank you very much, and so, you know, off we go, and we'll just tell these people they've not got jobs in the middle of the financial crisis, or you do the opposite, which is you can't do that. You know, I was fairly robust in my response. And I think the thing that frequently in sort of top-level relationships, you end up in a situation where you work with someone else and you've got different skill sets, you know, and Ross and I come from very different backgrounds, he's a brilliant, brilliant engineer and not so strong on the commercial side. It's not his interest, but he knows enough about it and vice versa.
And that was my job to step forward and say, we need to have some time here to try and find an alternative.

**Damian Harmon** (4:45)