Full Throttle

With the introduction of the budget cap in time for the 2010 Formula one championship season, former BAR Honda team principal, Dave Richards, is looking at introducing a Gulf backed team to the grid.

Richards, head of Prodrive and current chairman of Aston Martin, is looking to the gulf for backing to enter the pinnacle of Motorsport and instead of entering under Prodrive or Aston Martin, the English entrepreneur is looking to introduce a team based in the Middle East.

“I am looking seriously at that third option, that’s why I’m here,” Richards said. “We are looking for partners in the Gulf. We are aware that those partners will want a return on their investment and we are looking at how we can provide that. There has been much investment in circuits in this area [Bahrain and now Abu Dhabi] but the involvement of a team would take the region much further afield. It would spread around the globe.”

It appears as if Richards has already been approached by two individuals and he claims that here is a tremendous amount of interest in what they are doing, however he won’t reveal exactly where in the Middle East his interests lay.

“There are discussions to be held here in the UAE and elsewhere,” he said.

Richards is not the only one interested in entering the sport for 2010 and while there are three team slots available, he believes there could be as many as five submitting applications.

“The FIA would make a judgement on the most appropriate entries to accept,” he said. “I hope that our credentials stand us in good stead. We have been there before and done it before in most forms of motorsport.”

Richards was previously accepted to begin a team this season, however when the deal to use customer teams was quashed by the FIA[sco] he was forced to abandon his plans.

IN RELATED NEWS: Former Super Aguri team chief Aguri Suzuki told the Sankei Sports newspaper (Also known as Sanspo) on Wednesday that he was tempted to rejoin the sport he once labeled a “club full of piranhas”.

“If it’s physically possible I would certainly like to (return to Formula One),” Suzuki said.

I guess having Suzuki-san crawl from under tatami mat somewhere with all this talk of budget caps and new F1 entries should have been predictable, but I never saw it coming.

Dream on Suzuki-san, dream on.

IN NEWS of the MOST OBVIOUS KIND: Bernie “The Gnome” Ecclestone has reacted to Mad Max’s recent verbage saying if Ferrari didn’t like the new two-tiered budget system they could take their Tifosi and race somewhere else.

In a less that shocking development “The Gnome” has come out swinging in Ferrari’s defense.

“I won’t let it happen,” Ecclestone told the Times. “The trouble with Luca is that you shouldn’t let Max ever be in a position where he can start a debate or an argument.” (Tell that to the arses on the WMSC board that voted to keep “The Littlest Pervert” - ed)

“He’s reasonably clever and you won’t win. Even if you do win, it’s like you being in the audience and me being there with the microphone. You say something smart and I don’t give you the microphone, it’s as easy as that.”

According to Ecclestone, Ferrari would agree to the cap in principal, it is just a matter of fine tuning it.

“It would appear that everyone is in favour of the cap, including Ferrari, if we can get them to agree, which we can. However, there is concern over the amount that is referred to in the cap for some of the teams and also the two-tier system. So these are probably not monumental things to sort out.”

Psst, hey you up there, Suzuki-san the budget cap may be increased by 50% to £60 million or more for next year.

So much for your resurrected Super Aguri dreams.