Brawn confirms Fry retains CEO role

Ross Brawn has confirmed that Nick Fry will continue in the role of chief executive officer following his buyout of the former Honda Racing team.
Speculation in recent days has suggested that CEO Fry had been marginalised following the creation of Brawn GP last Friday.
Indeed Fry was not mentioned in Honda’s press release confirming the sale to Brawn, despite appearing as the team's representative at FOTA's press conference in Geneva the day before.
However, speaking to journalists for the first time about his new challenge as a team owner at the Barcelona test on Tuesday, Brawn put the rumours to bed by insisting Fry had been instrumental in helping secure the team’s rescue and that he remained a key player at the new squad.
"Nick has been a key member of the team, he retains his position as CEO and his position hasn't changed, despite the speculation,” Brawn told reporters.
“He's been a vital part of putting this all together."
While the former Ferrari technical mastermind may be the figurehead for the newly-renamed team, Brawn admits the Brackley-based squad would have closed had the management not stuck together and seen the buyout through.
"It's been stressful for the management, if we hadn't stayed together as a group it would have been very difficult to achieve, because there were some very black days in trying to keep this team alive,” he said.
“But I'm glad to say here we are and we are going to Melbourne.
"If I'm frank there were no choices.
“Because if the management group hadn't taken this task on all of the team would have been made redundant.”
Although Honda was believed to be willing to part with its F1 operation for a token sum following its decision to quit the sport last December, no confirmed details have yet emerged about how Brawn GP will finance its first season or structure its budget going forwards.
Reports have suggested that Honda will continue to fund the squad to a large extent during 2009, as it remains a cheaper option to shutting the whole team down, with further income coming from commercial revenues from Formula One Management.
Speaking on Tuesday Brawn didn’t go into details on his team's financial state, but did admit that although it had a solid budget to complete this year a long-term plan needed to be devised to ensure the squad’s survival well into the next decade.
And while he insisted this didn’t necessarily mean finding a longer-term owner, he did concede that his team needed to secure sponsors to boost its budget – hinting that the on-track performance of its so-far promising BGP 001 car this year would be key to doing that.
“Things can go wrong, but we are optimistic, but if we can capitalise on the performance of the car, and the car looks good, then the team has a future,” he said.
"This is a medium term solution and we need to find a solution for the long term.
“We are comfortable for the season.
“We need to find partners and sponsors to support the team.
“We need to be flexible on what we do but we will have proper structure going forward.”
Brawn's BGP 001 car has run without branding in its early pre-season test appearances with the team's lack of sponsors a legacy of Honda's decision to forgo on-car sponsorship since 2007 to promote environmental issues via its 'Earth Dreams' concept.