  In this paper we study the problem of Hamiltonization of nonholonomic systems
from a geometric point of view. We use gauge transformations by 2-forms (in the
sense of Severa and Weinstein [29]) to construct different almost Poisson
structures describing the same nonholonomic system. In the presence of
symmetries, we observe that these almost Poisson structures, although gauge
related, may have fundamentally different properties after reduction, and that
brackets that Hamiltonize the problem may be found within this family. We
illustrate this framework with the example of rigid bodies with generalized
rolling constraints, including the Chaplygin sphere rolling problem. We also
see how twisted Poisson brackets appear naturally in nonholonomic mechanics
through these examples.
