Poor Results, What Poor Results?
“Do you mean these poor results?”
“Why yes, yes I do.”
Given the above it isn’t a surprise Spyker Formula One is looking for a financial lifeline.
From the get go the Spyker operation has had a familiar smell to me.
A rich car enthusiast starts a company (2000) to produce elite handmade Super Cars. That base is later expanded to purchasing Midland F1 team from Russian businessman Alex Shnaider in September last year. (Snaider renamed the team Midland after purchase of the Jordon team from Eddie Jordan.)
The parent company that produces the C8 Laviolette and announced plans for producing the Spyker D12 Peking-to-Paris high-performance SUV has seen it’s financial fortunes take a serious nose-dive. That has led to the current situation:
Spyker Cars will be loss-making this year and the F1 team will not be “cash neutral” due to a higher than expected team expenditure as well as currency fluctuations and “less than anticipated revenues from the main income streams, such as television rights and sponsor income
Regardless of Spykers finances, the team will not disappear as there will ALWAYS be someone who wants to try F1.Even more so now that it is a closed shop, Prodrive got the last franchise. When Honda decided to go to the trouble of setting up Super Aguri (after the backlash on the homefront from dropping Sato) I always thought that they had a “sell off the team in the future” price in the back of their mind.
My tip for somebody to step up & grab Spyker (who just happen to use Ferrari engines) ART/ASM GP2,owned by a French dude & Nicolas Todt - recognise the surname - they have Phillip Morris backing & recently sold a 35% stake to a consortium from the royal family of Bahrain.Cashed up? you betcha!
Actually I feel sorry for Spyker because they arrived a year too early. Next year you can run a customer chassis, that has to make finding sponsors easier as you are more or less competitive from the start. Imagine how ProDrive will hit the ground running next year with a customer McLaren? Customer teams wont have to go through that painful starting process that Spyker has had to endure.
ASM/ART Bahrain F1, with a customer Ferrari….you heard it first here from me.
What, you dropped by and didn’t leave a couple bucks for my 2008 Maserati GranTurismo?!
Be gone with you.
As for ProDrive, they have been very silent for a year but still claim to be in the mix.
We’ll see.