May 12 (GMM) Ross Brawn has revealed that he is "happier" now than when he was solely in charge of a team bearing his own name.

In the wake of Honda's shock exit at the end of 2008, the Briton and a group of team management took over and won last year's title.

But for 2010, Brawn GP was bought out to become Mercedes's new works team, with the 55-year-old staying on board as team principal.

Brawn's passion and focus has always been on the engineering side, and he told the Financial Times this week: "To perform in the best possible way, I'm happier not being the majority shareholder."

He said he only ever owned the team "by default", and while able to run the highly-competitive chassis designed with Honda's huge resources, was financed only by the Japanese marque's parting EUR2 million gift.

Brawn explained that F1 teams usually work "to a budget that is guaranteed two to three years ahead.

"But here I was in a situation where there was no budget. You had to do as well as you could and make the company as viable as possible while spending the minimum amount of money doing it."

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