WHEN Ross Brawn first sits behind his desk at the Honda F1 headquarters in Brackley, England next week, it will be just 30 days to Christmas.

So it is safe to assume that the former Ferrari technical chief can be regarded as an early Christmas present for the beleaguered team.

Frankly, they need it.

Honda started the 2007 season with high hopes.

In 2006, Jenson Button had scored both his and the team's first victory in Hungary, while a string of top four results marked the partnership as one to watch at the start of this season.

Then it all went horribly wrong.

Right from the start of the season, the Honda, with its unusual "My Earth Dream" livery, turned out to be a nightmare.

It proved neither faster, nor predictable to drive. Both its front and rear tyres would sometimes lose grip for no apparent reason.

The only bright spot for drivers Button and Rubens Barrichello was that it was often unreliable too. At least it didn't prolong their suffering in the cockpit.

It seems that the team's problems really started last autumn, when their brand-new wind tunnel, capable of testing a full-sized car on a rolling road at 300kmh, hit major problems.

It is thought that a car actually came adrift inside the tunnel at full speed, wrecking both it and the tunnel's interior.

Honda immediately imposed a media blackout, all I could get from one insider was: "We've got a lot of data on cars going backwards?upside down."

Whatever actually happened, the immediate effect was that the designers were short of aerodynamic data.

A few months later, their brilliant chief engineer, Jeff Willis, left the organisation. He is now at RedBull. That left Honda in a technical "black hole".

Team boss Nick Fry is one of the most politically and commercially astute men in the Formula One paddock, but it is clear he is no engineer.

Shuhei Nakamoto, a respected Honda engineer, was put in charge of operations. But, frankly, he has struggled with the pressures of F1 competition and many key staff have drifted away to other teams through the season.

Brawn, with his proven record of success, is just the tonic Honda need.

He first worked as a nuclear research scientist before his passion for motor racing saw him join the Williams team in the late 1970s. His career saw him work with several teams, including developing the Jaguar sports cars which won the Le Mans 24-hour race.

In 1991, he joined the Benetton F1 team as their chief engineer. There, he came into contact with the young Michael Schumacher.

The rest, as they say, is history. In 1994, the Schumacher-Benetton combination won eight Grand Prix races to take the world champion's title.

In 1995, it was a similar story - except that the German won nine races that year.

In 1996, Brawn moved with Schumacher to Ferrari, who had won just two races in the previous five years.

The combination of the German's driving talent and Brawn's ability to motivate and organise the previously chaotic team was unbelievable.

That first season saw the team win three races, the next year, four. By 2000, Schumacher was again the world champion, with Brawn as his closest lieutenant and confidant, right up to the pair's departure from the sport at the end of last year.

So what will Brawn bring to Honda?

I suspect that the word "motivation" will be heavily used in the next few months.

The team need a change of culture - from top to bottom.

While Button has proved resilient, pushing the 2007 car beyond its limits, Barrichello has certainly been less willing to fight for a losing cause.

Brawn's arrival will have to re-motivate one of the veterans of the F1 paddock. Alternatively, the word might be "replacement".

Amazingly, there have been no rumours of links with Fernando Alonso yet - though that might just be a matter of time.

But, what of talk that Brawn might have headed back to Ferrari?

Well, certainly he'd discussed resuming his future there, allowing Jean Todt to assume a more executive role.

I suspect Kimi Raikkonen's winning the world championship this year made Brawn's mind up.

Why would he want to take over a team who have just proven that they could win a world championship without him?

Brawn's make-up is much more about taking up a challenge. Just as he did at Benetton and at Ferrari, he is aiming to take a team and fulfil their potential to become world champions.

It will be fascinating to see whether he can do it.

Steve Slater is one half of the popular F1 commentary duo on STARSports