Fry confirms 270 Brawn staff to lose jobs

(GMM) Brawn GP chief executive Nick Fry has confirmed reports the British team has decided to shed nearly 40 per cent of its workforce.

We reported last week that officials of the former Honda outfit had informed its 700 Brackley based staff by letter that 275 of them will be made redundant.

"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," said Fry, on the day the rebranded team secured a one-two victory on debut in Australia.

Brawn also signed a significant sponsorship deal with Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group in Melbourne, the British billionaire confirming the coup is worth "tens of millions" to the newly-independent team.

But the new annual budgets will still be much smaller than in the Honda era. "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 (as BAR)," Fry said.