Customer cars and F1

This morning brought the hardly unexpected but still sad news that Super Aguri will no longer figure on the Formula One grid, thanks to the inability to come to a satisfactory agreement with potential investors and the withdrawal of Honda support.

Aguri Suzuki’s likeable and hard-working little team had built up a strong fan-base – not least here on UpdateF1 – with Takuma Sato and Anthony Davidson frequently punching above their apparent weight, and it is unfortunate that these two drivers will no longer have weekends to look forward to for the rest of 2008.

Naturally the F1 bulletin boards are alive with discussions on where the blame lies, and opinion is varied – Nick Fry, Honda F1 CEO, appears to be taking a lot of flak, but this unfair given the modern state of Formula One. Honda are a team in trouble at the moment, and one who need to improve (and are doing) to keep the board happy, hence it is easy to see that a customer team pulling resources from the works effort is hardly the simplest thing to justify right now. Add to that the influence of Ross Brawn – a man given to singular focus with no distraction as a formula for success – and the writing has been on the wall for some time.

In his official statement Aguri Suzuki also alludes to the promised sponsorship deal with SS United that collapsed through no fault of the team, and also to the change in direction of environment’ with regard to customer cars. The latter comment is perhaps the most telling, and it must be remembered that the FIA – just a few years ago – invited tenders for participation on the grounds that customer chassis would be allowed, even encouraged, only to dither and relent on that promise to the detriment of the ‘12th entry’ – Prodrive - and now Super Aguri. Scuderia Toro Rosso, too, are feeling the punch, with Red Bull boss Mateschitz having publicly announced that his fifty percent share in the team is on the market.

In an insightful article in this month’s edition of Motor Sport, Gerhard Berger is particularly vocal about the present situation.

“With question marks about the future rules” he says, referring to the customer car situation “for Red Bull it doesn’t make much sense to have two separate teams running.”

Dave Richards – Prodrive boss – also expresses great regret at the collapse of his entry, and explains the customer car route as preferable thus:

“..to have started a team from scratch and to have expected to have been competitive would frankly have been grossly naïve.”

Of course, Richards is right, and this is precisely why the FIA pushed the customer car concept so forcefully when Prodrive were enticed into the fold.

Perhaps, though, the naivety lay with the FIA, and with Bernie Ecclestone, who – as the article goes on to explain – believed back then that they could convince the existing teams to accept the customer chassis ideal.

As we know, they reckoned without Frank Williams, and without Colin Kolles of Midland (now Force India) both of whom were independent outfits designing and building their own chassis.

The pros and cons of customer chassis are many – and would need a separate piece to describe – but suffice to say that someone, somewhere got something wrong.

Who, where and how are questions that will never be answered, but it remains to be said that granting teams an entry on the basis of a model that was being actively challenged in law (both Williams and Midland threatened arbitration over the matter) was clearly misguided, and cost Dave Richards and Prodrive a lot of wasted time, effort and money.

It cost Super Aguri more, of course, and leaves us with only ten teams in as season when we were all looking forward to a full grid.

Small outfits like Aguri are essential to F1 – just as Minardi, Osella, and others have been in previous years – and it remains to be seen how the sport can entice new entrants when the climate is one of spend, spend, spend with no viable entry route.

Of course, budget caps have been mentioned – but that is another matter, for another time.


Written by Steve Turnbull on Tue, 06 May 2008 13:35:05