Mosts fans consider 2009 to be a fluke.
Kind of like Fisichella taking a strong second in the Force India or Hill nearly winning in an Arrows, but just over a whole season instead.
With enough money and time they finally did the job (whilst Ferrari and McLaren were distracted by KERS and made terrible cars), but the skill of the technical department still does not appear to be on a level with Lotus let alone the big three teams.
It's with good reason if no development money in 2009 was the problem, then how come the Mercedes-funded 2011 car was worse than the 2010 one, and the 2012 car arguably even worse again ! Fans would be expecting continual improvement and (aero) problems to be rectified reasonably quickly like how Red Bull do it. Although it is true that Red Bull never bother to fix their mediocre and unreliable KERS, although it did seem they get the alternators sorted (probably their fault for pushing something to the max somewhere and breaking the alternator!).
Let's agree to disagree. If you take the effort to search and read back on some articles, the impact and methodology of Brawn when he arrived, after he was courted and poached by Fry was quite well documented in 2008. If the team would have remained intact as the Honda team, they would have had every possibility to further improve on what they had. But Honda pulled out, and the team was practically demolished. but still won the both championships. So you may agree, that there is practically no continuity from 2009 to 2010. So now, you bring in the 2010/11/12 seasons (which I certainly agree were the biggest pissoffs I have ever lived through as an F1 fan) and try to ignore everything that has been written on the subject, furthermore, you try to rationalize continuity between the pre 2009 and 2010/11/12 seasons, in which time frame, the team was completely restructured, developed, and rebooted again, which practically means starting from zero in 2013. As i said, it is pretty tiring, and I have to say slightly dumb to compare the current team to the BAR Honda/Honda/further back XXXX teams. and even to last year. Like apples to oranges. They have next season to show something promising.
edit: yes, about the 'fluke' thingy. That was quite well documented too. It certainly wasn't a fluke. There were two other teams sporting a DD, one of them with smilar resources as Honda, and did not even come close to compete. Furthermore, it was aknowledged to be a great design DD aside too. It won the WDC/WCC with a sawn-off. hacked behind to install the merc lump, without KERS, had stellar reliability, and has not been developed an inch throughout the season. Not a fluke mate, at all.
Edited by Szoelloe, 21 December 2012 - 22:51.