They may have had a brilliant start to the 2009 Formula One championship season, with Jenson Button taking the first pole position of their very short history and then following it up by taking a maiden one two finish down under, but it is not all smiles back at Brawn GP’s factory in Brackley.

After securing the former Honda team’s future just three weeks before the start of the season, travelling down under to see that team win in dominating fashion, Ross Brawn is now faced with the harsh reality of saying goodbye to some 270 members of staff.

Due to the fact that there is no longer the huge budget enjoyed by Honda, the team need to cut their numbers by a third in order to adjust to their current budget.

"It's about 270,” Nick Fry told Reuters. "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 were in 2004. 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."