Mercedes Benz

It's rare that the big news in Formula 1 is actually big news, but that was the situation that arose yesterday when Mercedes announced that they were selling their 40% share in McLaren and buying into a controlling interest in the Brawn team, which will be rebranded as Mercedes in 2010. As well as it being pleasing from the point of view of a major manufacturer increasing their involvement in the sport whilst many of their fellows distance themselves, it is also of huge historical significance. In fact, it represents the most successful Grand Prix team of all time purchasing their closest rivals for that title.

It's a fittingly stellar end to what has turned out to be Brawn's only season as a constructor, a fairytale which has only ever been equalled by the Stuttgart marque's brief foray into the World Championship in the mid-1950s. Indeed, for all of their famous pre-war exploits, their World Championship record remains amongst the proudest boasts in motorsport.

Both Mercedes and Benz took part in the first ever motor race, the Paris to Rouen event of 1894. But Mercedes Benz first really made their mark on European motor racing in 1914 with a 1-2-3 finish in the French Grand Prix, Christian Lautenschlager's D35 emerging victorious from an epic and politically-charged battle with Georges Boillot's Peugeot in Lyon, less than a week after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. After the resumption of the sport following the Great War, Mercedes once again rose to prominence, in no small part due to the positive propaganda of such engineering excellence gave to Hitler's Germany. During the 1930s, the Mercedes-Benz Silver Arrows were the benchmark, along with their countrymen from Auto Union. Only the brilliant Tazio Nuvolari, frequently driving for Alfa Romeo, could ever really offer any consistent opposition to the German teams' dominance. In the end, such was the overwhelming superiority of the German machinery, even Nuvolari switched camps. Only the outbreak of the Second World War could put a stop to their towering achievements.

Mercedes' return to the sport, now formalised into the Formula 1 World Championship, was nothing short of spectactular. The team arrived half-way through the 1954 season and pulled out again at the end of 1955, after one of their cars was involved in the infamous Le Mans crash of that year, in which 81 spectators died. During that time, they contested 12 Grand Prix races, winning 9 of them. Also taking 8 pole positions and nine fastest laps, the team's 139.14 points were scored at an alarming rate of 11.595 per race. Naturally enough, they won both of the championships they contested, Juan Manuel Fangio winning the 1954 and 1955 drivers titles with a personal total of 8 wins from 12 starts.

Nobody, for all the technological innovations and performance increases in the 54 intervening years, was able to touch that record until Brawn this past year. Even Ferrari, hugely boosted by their stranglehold on the sport throughout much of the past decade, can only boast a points-per-start average of 6.299. However, in 2009 Brawn scored 8 wins, 5 poles and 4 fastest laps from their 17 starts, with 172 points scored at a rate of 10.118. It is perhaps a fitting monument to Ross Brawn's magnificent career in the sport that this record will now be set in stone next to his name. Of course, as the team principal of Mercedes Grand Prix, he is now concerned with making sure it remains the second best mark in the history of the sport.

That could be hard to do. In Mercedes' first spell in the championship, they had the distinct advantage of the pick of the drivers - only Alberto Ascari of that era's true greats never drove for the three-pointed star in a Grand Prix, and their beautiful W196 car enjoyed enormous technological superiority over a weaker field of cars than you would encounter in modern-day Grand Prix motor racing. However, what should also be remembered is that it was also an era before the institution of the Constructors' Cup. For all of their dominance, Mercedes have never been the Constructors' Champions of Formula 1. Indeed, despite the fruitfulness of their 15-year partnership with McLaren, even their engines have done relatively poorly, with just two titles to their name, the last of them being with the team they have now taken over.

For all this, it's hard to see Mercedes not being a success once more in their own right. They have bought into an experienced team with a growing appetite for excellence, and managed by one of the all-time great pit lane operators. Their drivers, likely to be Nico Rosberg and Nick Heidfeld, are also more than capable of getting the job done, with the added incentive that neither has so far done so in their F1 career. Finally, they are extensively experienced at this level, having been providing engines to the top levels of motorsport in some form or other for almost twenty years, before you even consider their role as a technical partner has played in the life of the McLaren team for a generation.

For everything, though, the best news of all is that their buy-out has seemingly sent Jenson Button in the direction of Woking, to form an all-British McLaren-Mercedes superteam comprised of the two most recent world champions. There are some companies who come into Formula 1 and seem to be at odds from the start to their end. Mercedes Benz are ably demonstrating that there are others who immediately fit in and are a force for positive development in the sport. Their role in the racing of the past 15 years cannot be underestimated, and it would be a spectacularly hardened and embittered person who would not wish them luck and hope to see them compete well in their own right.