The wacky financial deals surrounding F1

After Álvaro Parente lost his test seat with Virgin due to a government branch refusing to pay a previously agreed 2 million euros (some sources claim 3 million), now the rumour around is that Vitaly Petrov’s place in Renault isn’t as solid as it seemed. Will Buxton tells in his blog a fairly surreal story about Vitaly and his finances. It is widely known that he got that place thanks to an agreed fee of 15 million euros (yes, that’s an abysmally huge amount of money), and Will claims now in his story that the fee will be paid in two instalments – 7.5M€ in March, and the other 7.5M€ in June. Now, that would be alright if it wasn’t for the source of the money. Vitaly’s father told the russian media that he could not get sponsorship from any major russian company, and had to resort to a last minute extreme bank loan of 7.5M€ to cover the first instalment – a fee that is agreed but that Vitaly’s father hasn’t yet received, which could result in nasty consequences for Vitaly’s place in F1 if it doesn’t come in time.

Vitaly Petrov in Renault colors

This comes off as utterly irresponsible – take a 7.5M€ debt to get your son into racing, without any guarantees you’d make any money from it? It could also be a “pity me” bullshit story to attract more sympathy for Vitaly among potential new sponsors, but it still comes off as weird and desperate, even under that logic. With Formula 1 going back into the paydrivers world, expect more similar stories in the coming months. Drivers will lose seats on the basis of missing payments, guaranteed.

Meanwhile, there are still no decent news about Campos Racing, which has been linked to a partial or full buyout by Tony Teixeira for a long time now – without any official denials. That would be the same man who left A1GP in a state of insolvency, and who still owes money to Ferrari. Desperate much?

I have another point to make. After a decade in which Bernie Ecclestone successfully conned several governments to get them to pay extreme fees to hold races, supposedly for the promotion of tourism and international recognition of the said countries, it appears the new teams like the scheme and want to cash in on it as well. Parente was supposed to have Portuguese tourism money (not a first unfortunately, ask Tiago Monteiro); Petrov has “the sympathy of Putin” – whatever that means; the very dodgy USF1 squad somehow got the Argentinian president to pose along with Windsor and JM Lopéz for pictures, and help fund Lopéz’ seat; Lotus appears to be owned and/or sponsored by a project of the malaysian government; and Ecclestone has recently said that the weird Stefan GP team is solid because it has got serbian government funding – confirmed to him directly by the serbian prime minister. All of this for what exactly? I am sure that in a time of economical crisis there are better ways to spend government money than by funding backmarker teams and drivers of unknown merit? Or am I missing something? Is the exposure gained really worth that much?

Last week’s recap

Sorry for the lack of articles lately. I’ve been busy in work, not had much patience in my free time, and there hasn’t been much worth writing a full article about. Anyway, here’s a recap of last week’s news in the F1 world:

- The teams want to ban double diffusers from 2011 onwards. This should be good, as double diffusers weren’t intended by the Overtaking Working Group when they laid out the new aerodynamics rules for 2009, and some said it helped ruin the airflow behind the cars. However Mike Gascoyne has come out saying he doesn’t expect any more overtaking with the ban; and it brings up a cost problem as the teams will have to re-think and re-design many things in the back of the cars yet again for 2011.

- The german newspaper AMuS says there’s a new proposed points system: 25-18-15-12-10-8-6-4-2-1 instead of 25-20-15-10-8-6-5-3-2-1. I like it as it has a smoother mathematical progression and because there’s a bigger difference between 1st and 2nd place, which should place more incentive on risk-taking over conservative racing. There’s also talk of points for pole position and fastest lap – of that I’m not a fan because I’ve seen it in other categories such as GP2, and all it brought was more complicated scenarios rather than improving the racing.

- Silly season still goes on, without new driver announcements. Swiss sources insist de la Rosa is certain at Sauber. French sources claim the Renault seat is between Heidfeld and Sato. Toro Rosso is yet to confirm Jaime Alguersuari, meanwhile promising italian youngster Mirko Bortolotti has been dropped from the Red Bull Junior Team, so someone has added 2+2 and got 5 by claiming Bortolotti’s moving into F1. I think it’s nonsense as I see Bortolotti as even less prepared for F1 than Alguersuari seemed last year! USF1 should announce José María López soon, and brit James Rossiter has came up out of nowhere as a possibility for the other seat – which would make for a weird and likely uncompetitive pair of drivers. There’s no news for the other remaining seat at Campos, and they seem to have bigger things to worry about right now…

- …because it appears Adrian Campos is so desperate for money he is trying to sell the team, or a part of it. Shady former A1GP boss Tony Teixeira is linked to it, and the story seems to have credibility as even Autosport have reported on it. USF1 gave some good news by announcing they will test next month at Barber Motorsport Park in Alabama, after persistent rumours that the team is not for real. Then it all surfaced again yesterday with the Gazzetta de lo Sport claiming the team had asked the FIA to start the season at Barcelona, skipping the first few races. Jonathan Noble meanwhile has rubbished these claims.

- Outside of F1, there is plenty of people competing in the Dakar in South America, although there’s not much of battles for the lead there. In cars the Volkswagens have 2 hours over the rest of the pack; in trucks the 3rd placed is already 7 hours behind the russian Kamazes; and in bikes Cyril Despres also has over an hour of a lead – after some controversy with Marc Coma being penalized with 6 hours for an irregular tyre change.  The portuguese have been doing well, Carlos Sousa 7th in cars with a severely restricted Mitsubishi, and Hélder Rodrigues 4th in the bikes. Both have been running higher in earlier stages and have dropped back.

- In rallying, the season is about to start, as the IRC has their biggest event of the year in the Monte Carlo Rally. Robert Kubica and Toni Gardemeister are the latest additions to a superb lineup. I am pretty excited about the Monte, the IRC, and interested about the rivalry with the new S2000 Cup of the WRC so I might write an article about this soon. There’s also the Arctic Rally this month, and this is of interest because Kimi Raikkonen will do his debut in the Citroen C4 WRC.

Pre-season calendar starts shaping up

Sauber today was the first F1 team to confirm the date of the new car launch, and that is going to be at the 31st of January. There’s also some rumours around, coming from the german newspaper Bild, that Mercedes will launch their car at the 25th, and that it is going to be named RB-1, presumably as some sort of tribute to Ross Brawn. So it looks like we’re going to have some action by the end of the month, rather than in the mid of the month as I predicted recently.

Meanwhile, Planet-F1 (not a great source perhaps) has a full calendar for the February tests:

Test Schedule
01 February Circuito Ricardo Tormo
02 February Circuito Ricardo Tormo
03 February Circuito Ricardo Tormo
10 February Circuito Permanente de Jerez
11 February Circuito Permanente de Jerez
12 February Circuito Permanente de Jerez
13 February Circuito Permanente de Jerez
17 February Circuito Permanente de Jerez
18 February Circuito Permanente de Jerez
19 February Circuito Permanente de Jerez
20 February Circuito Permanente de Jerez
25 February Circuit de Catalunya
26 February Circuit de Catalunya
27 February Circuit de Catalunya
28 February Circuit de Catalunya

Sauber have been clever and will hold their car launch right at the circuit Ricardo Tormo in Valencia, where they’ll test the following day, a nice way to cut some costs. It’s also nice to hear that all 13 teams are supposed to be there, although many people on the internet seem to be doubting Campos’ and USF1′s presence (there are even some indications that Campos might skip more that one test!).

Now, sadly, it doesn’t look like the F1 cars are coming back here to Portugal this year. I’ve been a bit baffled by what exactly is the business plan of the Autódromo do Algarve in Portimão, being built as a test track in an era where there is little testing, and with 4 big competitors in Spain (the circuits of Catalunya, Jerez, Valencia and the yet-to-be-used-by-F1 Motorland Aragon). I hope I’m wrong but it seems concerning for the future of the circuit that the cars aren’t coming. A guy in the forums remarked that last year it rained in the F1 tests, and that might have been a big reason why the teams aren’t keen to come back – that’s just plain bad luck.

F1 testing at the Autódromo do Algarve produced some lovely photos last year.

At least there’s another interesting list of events for the year in Portimão, with GP2 as the open-wheel headliner, coming back for another standalone round, but GP2 doesn’t attract spectators, the TV stations pay little attention to it, and I doubt that they profit much from it (if they do at all). There’s also something big and new in the WTCC, with Formula 2 and International Formula Masters as supporters; the FIA GT1 World Championship; the uninteresting F3000 Euroseries, now re-badged as “AutoGP”; and the World Superbikes, which I’ve heard has some of the greatest racing in the world at the moment, but for some reason I’ve never been able to get into them – maybe this year?