Jenson Button’s nightmare at Honda may be coming to an end with the announcement yesterday that Ross Brawn, the technical mastermind behind Michael Schumacher’s seven World Championships, is to take over as team principal.

Brawn, 52, has just completed a sabbatical year away from Formula One and there had been speculation that he may return to Ferrari, where he was technical director, as team leader. But in a coup for Honda, the troubled Japanese manufacturer, Brawn has decided to take up the challenge of trying to pull them up from Formula One’s nether regions to turn them into serious contenders.

The team have been bedevilled by the Anglo-Japanese cultural chasm over which it operates, but Brawn, who will work alongside Nick Fry, the chief executive, believes that he can build a team to compete with Ferrari and McLaren. “I don’t think there will be any obstacles,” Brawn said. “It is up to us to create the tools, philosophies and culture that is needed to win.”

Brawn added that he has no idea how long it will take to change the fortunes of a team who scored only six drivers’ points during a dreadful season this year, all of them by Button. “There’s not a huge influence I can have on the current car [for the 2008 season] because that has been manufactured, but I hope I can start to introduce philosophies and ideas for the future,” Brawn, who is regarded as having one of the best technical and tactical minds in the pitlane, said.

For Button, the appointment has come a little late. The Briton, who finished in fifteenth place in the drivers’ championship this year, described the Honda he drove this season as a “complete dog” and gave warning that he would walk away at the end of the 2008 season if the team did not make significant improvement. But Fry said that Button is delighted with Brawn’s appointment. “Jenson said it was the best thing that’s happened in a long time,” Fry said.

Jean Todt, who has been Ferrari’s team principal since July 1993, has handed control of the racing team to Stefano Domenicali, the sporting director. Todt will continue as chief executive, overseeing the road car division and the racing team.