News is doing the rounds that Ross Brawn, team principal of the Mercedes GP team, will be stepping down from the board of directors of the company which runs it. It follows the sale of all of his shares in the team to Mercedes and the Abu Dhabi wealth fund Aabar last month.

In itself this news isn't that surprising since there is no obligation for a team principal to be on the board of the company which runs the team. Indeed, at least one other team also doesn't have its team principal on the board of the company running it. So this situation isn't as uncommon as, for example, having a chief executive who isn't on the board as is also the case with Mercedes. Not that there is anything wrong with this, it is just very rare.

In a nutshell, according to Pitpass' business editor Chris Sylt, Brawn stepping down as a director isn't odd and there seems to be a straightforward reason for it so one wonders why this hasn't been stated bluntly in the media reports so far.

One report claimed that "Ross Brawn is to help clear the way to get fully focused on helping Mercedes GP succeed in Formula 1 by resigning from its board." That doesn't really seem to make sense. Why not just say that running the team is different to running the company and a team principal doesn't have to be a director? That's not to say that a team principal can't be a director and this is where we hit another problem.

The same media report claims that "Brawn has to leave the board according to legal requirements in Germany and the UK, as only shareholders can stay on." This will presumably come as news to Syed Zainal Abidin Tahir, the managing director of Proton, and Dany Bahar, managing director of Lotus. Both are on the board of Lotus Renault GP limited, the UK company which runs the Renault F1 team, however, neither is a shareholder in it or employed by one of its shareholders. Is the reporting to blame or is there more than meets the eye here?