2008 Line-Up (Rumour Mill)

Richards is a good fella, and knows how to run a team. But they should have given the licence to Eddie to resurrect Jordan!

Hard to see a 12th team being on the grid next year unless a provision is made in the current Concorde Agreement. Someone bloody sack Mosley.
 
Richards has the ability to get a team off the ground. We will have 12 teams next year.
 
But as a constructor??? I don't think so, he doesn't have the facilities to make an F1 car.....they were never in his plans. We will see I guess.
 
Yup, it'll be almost impossible for Richards to enter the sport as a constructor next year. I refrain from saying impossible altogether after seeing the remarkable job Super Aguri pulled off two years ago, but even they used old chassis they didn't construct themselves. AFAIK they had a special permission to that back then, which would be far trickier to get today considering the battlefield behind the F1 scenes today.

The decision on customer cars can have a severe impact to the sport, as I don't think Super Aguri has the resources to design and develop a completely new car for next year without help from Honda either(edit: though they are based in the old Arrows F1 factory, so they should have needed facilities). Toro Rosso's situation would be similar, though not as bad as they are still based in Minardi's old factory in Faenza and at least have the necessary equipment and qualified personnel to do the job.

This is where the poor atmosphere in F1 really starts to hurt it. The big teams are battling against each other, with FIA messing things up even more and the small teams are the ones who suffer from all this. They won't spend resources on designing a new car as they might be able to buy cars which would render most of their development needless, but when the final decision does come (by the end of the year if they are lucky) they might end up with a need to design a new car pretty much from scratch two months before '08 kicks off.
 
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Dont forget, Dave said he has 3 teams lined up for chassis, so one of them may help him out.
 
He might, but I think the main problem isn't securing the deal, it's getting the permission to run those bought cars. If the concorde agreement doesn't allow them(the current one doesn't, and it seems to remain in use for 2008 ) they can't be run unless the team gets permission from all other teams. And with Spyker making big noise about customer cars they'll be unlikely to give that permission...
 
So if the concorde agreement gets blocked then Super Aguri, Prodrive and STR will be barred from racing.

And would Max and Bernard would allow 6 cars to be missing from the grid?
 
So if the concorde agreement gets blocked then Super Aguri, Prodrive and STR will be barred from racing.

And would Max and Bernard would allow 6 cars to be missing from the grid?

Not barred, I'm sure SA and STR could get some sort of cars to the grid, though propably not that competitive, but Prodrive would have harder time on it.

Also, as it's not only between FIA and the F1 Management (FOA) but also involves all the teams Bernie and Max can't really do anything about it by themselves.
 
^ Yeah, but its Williams and Spyker kicking up a fuss about customer cars, which means Super Aguri and STR would be in the same situation.
 
Prodrive entry hangs in the balance

By Biranit Goren Wednesday, October 10th 2007, 10:07 GMT

Prodrive hope to resume negotiations with McLaren if the issue of their entry using customer cars is resolved later this month, but the British team have hinted they may not be ready for the start of the 2008 Formula One season.

Prodrive, who won the 12th entry for the 2008 season, have been in talks with McLaren over a commercial agreement that includes a supply of chassis and car parts.

But the entry has now been challenged and will be reviewed by the FIA's International Court of Appeal in two weeks' time.

Moreover, with no new commercial agreement between all teams, the FIA and FOM signed for next year, the existing Concorde Agreement looks set to be renewed for another year - which will, in effect, bar Prodrive from using another team's construction for their cars.

As revealed by autosport.com yesterday, McLaren F1 CEO Martin Whitmarsh notified his staff on Monday that they will not continue with the Prodrive deal.

In response, Prodrive have told autosport.com the negotiations with McLaren could be renewed if the Court of Appeal decides in their favour - and if the Concorde Agreement is resolved in time to allow customer cars.

But they have expressed concern that with time running out, Prodrive may not be ready in time for the start of the 2008 season in Australia.

"It would be totally wrong for anyone to claim that 'negotiations between Prodrive and McLaren have collapsed'; quite the contrary," Prodrive said.

"Both Prodrive and McLaren have, for some time, agreed on the manner in which we would establish 'the 12th team' in time for the 2008 F1 season.

"However, we have now passed our self-imposed deadline required to guarantee a competitive and professional start to next year.

"The delay in confirming our agreement with McLaren has been created by a challenge to our entry in next year's F1 World Championship as a non-Constructor.

"While we remain confident that the short term issue of eligibility to race in 2008 will be resolved in our favour, it still leaves the question of longer term stability unanswered.

"It is Prodrive's opinion that the financial viability of a new team will not be possible until agreement is reached on a revised 'Concorde Agreement'.

"This is required to determine the long term rights of participation in the championship and eligibility to FOM income, on an equitable basis for all participants in Formula One.

"It would therefore be totally irresponsible of us to employ all the staff required to establish the new team or commit to significant financial obligations while these uncertainties are still unresolved.

"Prodrive remain committed to participating in Formula One. We are hopeful that the current dispute over our eligibility to race will be clarified at the ICA hearing later this month and that a 'Concorde Agreement' between the FIA, FOM and all 12 teams can be established in the near future.

"In the meantime, we will consider all our alternative options for next season."

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/63189
 
^ Yeah, but its Williams and Spyker kicking up a fuss about customer cars, which means Super Aguri and STR would be in the same situation.

Not at exactly the same since, as I mentioned in my previous post, both STR and SA own the necessary facilities that have been used for building F1 cars (ex-Minardi and ex-Arrows respectively) and that's something that Prodrive lacks. They also have most of the required personnel and organisation ready, perhaps needing a bit of expansion if they have to design their own cars but Prodrive would need to create most of the organisation.
 
Not at exactly the same since, as I mentioned in my previous post, both STR and SA own the necessary facilities that have been used for building F1 cars (ex-Minardi and ex-Arrows respectively) and that's something that Prodrive lacks. They also have most of the required personnel and organisation ready, perhaps needing a bit of expansion if they have to design their own cars but Prodrive would need to create most of the organisation.

Prodrive have the same facilities as Spyker and Super Aguri. Rumour had it that they would build componants for McLaren, and they can build a full car if they wanted.
 
Ok this might be the worlds biggest simplification but surely budget wise it isn't THAT expensive to build your own car. They would need all the test facilities anyway so the actual production of a car would be a couple of million extra???? Surely if you can secure $30million (for example) in sponsorship you can find a couple more to actually create the car??
 
Prodrive have the same facilities as Spyker and Super Aguri. Rumour had it that they would build componants for McLaren, and they can build a full car if they wanted.

Which facilities are you referring here?

I know Prodrive has a composite manufacturing facilities and they manufacture some components to F1 teams over there but AFAIK it's not large enough for manufacturing whole F1 monocoques.

Ok this might be the worlds biggest simplification but surely budget wise it isn't THAT expensive to build your own car. They would need all the test facilities anyway so the actual production of a car would be a couple of million extra???? Surely if you can secure $30million (for example) in sponsorship you can find a couple more to actually create the car??

That's simplifying it by quite a lot ;)

It's a very sophisticated piece of kit, an F1 car, which means that both designing and actually manufacturing the car takes quite a bit of special equipment and workforce who have the necessary skills. The former is not cheap, and the latter is not cheap nor that easy to come by.
 
k, I thought Prodrive had a huge production factory. My bad.
 
http://www.prodrive.com/level2.html?id=25 I'd say they could build their own F1 car...

It's not whether they can or can't. It's more about whether they could do it in the timeframe they'd have considering that they don't have the organisation ready (remember, the F1 project is done alongside Prodrive's normal projects like SWRT) and, even more importantly, whether that would be in any way viable. For one it would be an expensive project, both financially and resource wise (latter meaning they'd need to shift resources from other projects, reducing the amount of revenue the company generates), there would be no time to do everything properly and unless the car turned out to be brilliant finding enough sponsorship to cover the initial investments plus the costs of running the team would be very hard. It wouldn't make sense.

Either way, let's just hope that they'll get the permission to run customer cars.
 
^ Well we also dont know whether or not they have started anything yet incase the customer deal fell through.
 
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