By Andrew T. Davies
There's some odd things going on down at Brackley right now. As the hour approaches when the Honda Racing team need to announce a financially solvent new owner, there are rumours and counter-rumours.
Will Honda sell to the management team, will they sell to Virgin, will they sell to an as yet unnamed third party, or will they - as they hinted today - simply disband the team?
When the team were put up for sale and the world of F1 gathered itself after the sudden shock, it was widely thought that David Richards and his ProDrive outfit would step in.
Richards had long cherished the dream of entering F1 after he was awarded the 12th slot on the grid by the FIA, back in the days when customer cars were the way forward. When he stepped back from the deal, the management team, led by CEO Nick Fry, became the front runners.
But there was obviously internal dissension as a source within the team started leaking information to the press. There was a report in the Daily Mail that the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) were investigating Fry's role in the sale of the team - amid suggestions he could be favouring himself as part of a management buyout.
Fry then got all uppity at suggestions that he was acting anything less than with utmost propriety.
"I would like to make clear that Honda Motor Company, as the owners of the Honda Racing F1 Team, will decide on the future of our team following their decision to withdraw from Formula One," he told autosport.com.
"At all times during the process of securing the future of the team, senior managers from Honda Motor Company have been present at our HQ in Brackley to assist in making decisions and we have taken legal advice at all times, to ensure no conflict of interest.
"It is evident that attempts are being made by external parties to frustrate this process. However, we will not be deterred from our focus of securing a positive future for the team and its 700 employees and achieving our target of lining up on the grid in Melbourne for the start of the 2009 season."
Viewed from the outside it sounded like someone in the Honda Racing team thought that Nick Fry's management team were putting their interests in ownership above the long-term interests of the team as a whole.
Virgin would be bringing new money into the sport and would give the team independence. The last thing that FOTA would want right now is a team that is dependent on Bernie Ecclestone's money. There have been suggestions that the only way Fry's management buy-out could succeed is with money from Bernie. I hope that's not true.
Richard Branson doesn't like failing. Were he to take over the team then it would be a much bigger story if Branson let it fail than for the management buyout to fail, and for that reason alone Honda Racing are better off in Virgin's hands.
Ecclestone himself said he would welcome the Virgin Group into F1. "We would welcome them with open arms," Bernie told The Mirror. "He's exactly the type of person we would want in the sport. Sir Richard Branson is a wonderful guy. I met him at Monza last year and we got on very well."
It would be like having another Dieter Mateschitz or Vijay Mallya on the grid, someone incredibly successful who couldn't afford to fail. Far better than someone who couldn't find a title sponsor in the last few seasons.
And there is one good thing to emerge in the last few days - Texan billionaire Alan Stanford had no interest at all in F1.
Source:
http://www.planetf1.com