But Brawn won't give Jenson the pay increase he wants, they won't even meet him half way. So why not go to Mclaren? They will match his wage demands and give him a potential championship winning car. Rosberg and Kovalainen at Brawn for 2010 anyone?
They turned the worst car on the grid into a race winning car in a matter of months. I think it's safe to say they have grasped the new regulations, and have shown they have the ability to develop their car very quickly during a season. I personally think Mclaren and Red Bull will be the two top teams next year, since they both improved their cars this season. Brawn actually got worse as the season went on, the only question is just how good Ferrari's car will be considering they started working on it so early.
They won't really have any perceptible influence on the car. They could help to improve the car through the season, but that actually requires Ferrari to begin the season with a car that has enough potential for development.
Perhaps I suppose, I'm not saying that its unlikely, I think its very likely that Mclaren will be at the top next year, just that its not guarenteed. Especially in the long term, with Mercedes looking like they're going to back Brawn and Mclaren going their own way.
Do remember that one of the contributing factors to Brawn going backwards in the second half of the season was that they stopped to start developing next year's car. Then again Mclaren are probrably doing something similar too (seeing as they had no championship to fight out to the end this year). And Mclaren are probrably big enough to develop an existing car and design a new one at the same time (they did something similar to this in 2004, developing the previous year's car while building the new one).
Theres no difference in the regs though, apart from no-refueling, which is going to make the car bigger but its not a substantial change like this year was, so don't see why Brawn need so long to develop the car tbh. Again i could be wrong. :P
I think the next year Brawn car will still be competitive
Ros Brawn stated that it has been developed this whole season, spending only a little bit of time on the current car. Also, it will be adapted for the Mercedes engine. The current car had the engine not placed in the middle, so the right part of the car was actually lighter/heavier than the other part.