Brawn aerodynamicist wins Dino Toso award

Thursday 26th November 2009

Brawn GP's Head of Aerodynamics Loic Bigois has won the 2009 Dino Toso Racecar 'Aerodynamicist of the Year' award at the Oxford World Motorsport Symposium.

Brawn GP claimed the victory in both 2009 Championships as Jenson Button raced to the Drivers' title while Brawn beat Red Bull Racing to the Constructors' crown.

The team is now being honoured outside of F1 as well with Bigois claiming the honour of 'Aerodynamicist of the Year' at a ceremony held last week.

"I am very proud to accept this Award on behalf of Brawn GP's Aerodynamic Department," he said.

"I am particularly happy as it is the Dino Toso Award and I appreciated Dino very much. I would just like to make a wish. The organisers should change the name of this award for next year from Aerodynamicist of the Year to Aerodynamic Department of the Year."

"The result comes from team work, from a complete department and not from only one individual. 2009 was successful for us but was also very tough.

"In the same week in March, we achieved an outstanding one-two result in Melbourne and went through the redundancy process at the factory. In fact it was quite difficult to enjoy our success at the time and I want to dedicate this Award to the complete aero department; to the people who are still here and those who left in March or returned to Honda in Japan.

"Many thanks to them all for their contribution."

Your Comments

Chylout

"davratta - glad to see we are in agreement. However I don't think the diffuser was as big a deal as you make out. Gary Anderson reckons Brawn's diffuser was worth only 20kg of downforce over the 'single' ones. That's not much. When Red Bull turned up at Silverstone with a refreshed diffuser and suddenly oblitorated the opposition they actually had 70-odd new parts on the car - not just the diffuser. The advantage of the double diffuser was bigged up for other reasons - the likes of Dr Mario and Christian Horner saying it was worth 0.5-1s per lap (when they knew better) was designed to influence the WMSC. They claimed it was illegal when it was actually a valid interpretation that was considered by all teams but dismissed by most because only 3 teams came up with the idea of moving the gearbox forward to make the diffuser's second tier work. They said if you allow their diffuser we will have to spend a lot of money to make our own - the reality was they were already designing their own because they knew the diffuser was fine and they had just missed a trick. What they wanted was to neuter Brawn - the Brawn advantage was much more than just the diffuser. The entire car was fantastic from the start. If the diffuser had been declared illegal their hope was that the early wins would be taken away and thus their early championship advantage - that was the motive. Removing Brawn's diffuser wouldn't have changed the car's performance that much, but it would have taken valuable points away if they had been given disqualifications in Melbourne and Sepang. Sorry for the long post - I suppose the short version of my point is the other teams made a big thing of the diffuser, and everyone has bought into that - the reality is the diffuser was a tiny part of the advantage Brawn had at the start, and the reasons for saying otherwise were political"

Paint

"Ahah, some comments are so funny... People seem to forget that Brawn won two races AFTER those big wins at the start. Red Bull were nowhere in Monza and Valencia. BGP had the best package, and even if they had problems to warm the tyres, well, Red Bull destroyed their tyres after 3 laps in Monaco because of the temperature... This year was all about the extremes, one or the other. Well done to Bigois and his team, it's good to read that we still have team players in F1. And buang... Hope you're joking. The guy accepted the award for the whole department. Of course he deserves it."

deepfridge

"By the way.."Fairplay",the diffuser was allowed after a lot of Max inspired dithering in the hope it would destabilise the FOTA members harmony..along with a few other things he tried right up to his leaving, the last being in order to achieve engine parity, rather than allowing the least powerful engines an upgrade (logical and done before) tne most powerful (successful) engines would have to downgrade...."

deepfridge

"The guy that found the loophole was a Honda tech in Japan (so said Ross Brawn early on)),they seem to struggle with grip unless the conditions were favourable.OK they won both championships but I would have thought Red Bull would have been the worthy winners based on a clever initial design successfully upgraded thru' the season..but what do I know. ! "

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