Ecclestone to rescue Minardi?

[Gerard]

The Minardi team's deal with PSN fell through this week as confirmed by PSN on Friday and sources have indicated that the team might be staring bankruptcy in the face.

Sources have indicated that Bernie Ecclestone has stepped in to broker an engine deal for the team for the 2001 season and has approached Cosworth to supply the team with a Zetec-R V10 unit for next season.

Sources furthermore indicated that Neil Ressler of Jaguar is supporting Ecclestone in his bid to secure Cosworth engine supply for Minardi for 2001

[Valve Bounce]

Why doesn't one of the car manufacturers like Toyota, Honda, Renault, Ford, BMW, Fiat or GM not buy out Minardi at a bargain price? Surely there must be some advantage for one of these to have their own F1 car. Right now, the only manufacturer to own a team is Jaguar, and they are not a large scale manufacturer anyway. I have excluded Ferrari because they are in a different league - they only make toy cars (albeit very expensive toys). In another year's time, Toyota will be the only major manufacturer in F1 by name, and if they do well, the price of entry for a new manufacturer will be prohibitive.

[Gt_R]

"Why doesn't one of the car manufacturers like Toyota, Honda, Renault, Ford, BMW, Fiat or GM not buy out Minardi at a bargain price?"

Toyota is having entry as a team in 2002
Honda is waiting to buy BAR, whom they have contributed to lots of techincal assistance.
Renault is returning to take full control at Benetton.
Ford owns Jaguar which owns its own F1 team, as well as a ton of other car manufacturers
BMW is the techincal partner for Williams, and a buyout is not fully impossible.
Fiat owns Ferrari which owns its own F1 team, as well as Maserati.
No point having an extra team?

Which leaves only General Motors for the take, but unfortunately, doesnt have exactly the technological know-hows...oh, and how about VW?? Surely they are tempted to come to F1 to compete with the other major players. Maybe they can enter as Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley? No, they cant, because currently they are busy planning a Bentley re-entry to LeMans.Peugeot is another No-No too.

Guess that leaves no major manufacturers to take over Minardi?


Minardi came to this state mainly because Ford refused to supply customer engine, and so does Renault and Honda(Mugens).
And this is not the end, because as F1 takes to the manufacturers side, Jordan would be faced with the same problem if Honda decides to buy Bar and concentrate on a team only. Sauber and Prost would face the same problem if Ferrari pulls out of customer engines...and there is simply not enough Manufacturers to take all a team each.

Either private engine specialist makers, like AMT and Mecachrome, which improves year old engnes, come to F1 and supply a team, or Manufacturers themselve provide year old engines to a second team(like what Ferrari is doing now, and i think Mercedes should be too...), otherwise F1 would always face engine shortages...and see good teams face the risk of folding....

[SL]

Just a side note about uncle Bernie.

The Sunday Times today published a UK top 500 of wage earners. This is based on wage earned Oct 99 to Oct 00. No person with inherited wealth, or wealth based on stocks, shares, land or property is included. It is an assesment of income NOT overall wealth.

Top of the pile comes..........

Bernie Ecclestone Age 70
Earnings £617 million

second place is a John Hargreaves on £237 milliion.

Eddie Irvine is 131st on £7 million
Adrian Reynard 184th on £4.426 million
Colin McRae 229th on £3.5 million

Just strikes me that just 10% of Bernies £617 million wage would help Minardi and I doubt if Bernie would even notice.


How about it ????????

[Jeanburrasca81]

All these problems...poor Giancarlo Minardi really shouldn't have such sorrows with such a nice team...but that's no attribute which counts in F-1. Don't even play with the thought Ecclestone gives Minardi some of his personal money, he wouldn't get enough profit with it.

To Valve bounce, doesn't Ford own the majoroty of Jaguar?

[Valve Bounce]

I know Ford owns jaguar - they also own Volvo. I was just trying to throw a little humour around as GT_R has spotted already that all the car manufacturers I suggested (except GM who have throughout history a negative approach to motor racing) are involved in F1. I could have suggested Chrysler, Mazda or Nissan or even a Korean maker like Hyundai, but what's the point. I just feel so sad that Minardi is in such Dyre Straits. I guess Bernie gets his kicks from watching Minardi tooling around the rear of the field. He has enough dough to buy Minardi and enough clout to force a major company to supply engines. And that illegitimate fornicator would end up making money out of it too.

[White Van Man]

Chrysler = Mercedes = McLaren
Mazda = Ford = Jaguar
Nissan = Renault = Benetton

[Valve Bounce]

Does this make sense? If Fiat bought Minardi, they could use Minardi to sort out young potential drivers for Ferrari. They could also stuff experimental engines and software into Minardi and use them for a test bench under race conditions. I know this sounds incredible, but we are getting to the desperate stage where we are all grasping at straws to try to save Minardi.

[Tris]

I would not like to see Minardi go.....

But Lotus have gone and Bernie did squat to help the team who are the second most important team of all time after Ferrari.

Teams come and go, that is a fact of life. What worries me is that if Minardi do go the grid will be very small indeed.

I think the problem is that it is too difficult to get an entry into F1 now. Have to give Uncle B' your deposit of $$ Millions that he gives back to you so you make sure you have a years budget. Stupid is it not.

Another idiotic rule .. to compete in Formula One you need to be a member of FOCA and to be a member of FOCA you have to compete in all the Grand Prix.

Look at what Honda did in the 60's they would go to a race and if they needed to sit a few races out for development work they would. It is ridiculous that this is not allowed now.

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by Tris
I would not like to see Minardi go.....
Look at what Honda did in the 60's they would go to a race and if they needed to sit a few races out for development work they would. It is ridiculous that this is not allowed now.

Fair point Tris. But would you sponsor Minardi, only to be told that they weren't going to be in the next two races??

[Tris]

Originally posted by MichaelC

Fair point Tris. But would you sponsor Minardi, only to be told that they weren't going to be in the next two races??

If I was sympathetic sponsor, with a long term deal and Minardi were up front about things, yes I would. Honda is a different case though as they were effectively their own sponsors. But teams used to do things like run last years car so they could keep the money coming in through sponsorship while they worked on a totally new car. Arrows basically ran the 98 car in 99 while they sorted out the car for 2000. It as if they saved up for 2000 by not developing a specific challenger for 99. It shows it can be done though!

(P.S. about sponsors themselves. I did not approve of the way Mastercard shafted Lola in 1996. They wanted to advertise on my website but after the Lola affair no way!)

[MichaelC]

Tris, there's no such thing as a sympathetic sponsor!! If you're putting money into a team, it's not because you want to see them racing, it's because you want other people to see them racing, carrying your name / logo / whatever, and giving brand exposure for whatever it is you're trying to sell.
No-one is going to put money into a team which is only going to run half a season. If they do, you can be sure they'll be putting in a lot less than they would for a whole season, which means that the team, be that Minardi or any other, is exactly back where they started.

I do agree with you about Mastercard. They wanted to get into GP racing, so they basically bullied Lola (no mean achievement!!) into hurridly building a 'team' and a car, which was poor to say the very least. The nearest it got to a wind tunnel is when one of the designers passed wind whilst walking down a corridor in their offices.

[Gt_R]

Quote: "The nearest it got to a wind tunnel is when one of the designers passed wind whilst walking down a corridor in their offices."

[Gt_R]

Quote: "The nearest it got to a wind tunnel is when one of the designers passed wind whilst walking down a corridor in their offices."




...MichaelC, i fully agree with what you said about the sponsors... they are just a mean bunch who puts financial benefits as the top priority...but who wouldn't considering the huge amount of cash it involves? Sponsors are gaining exposure to public,not gaining karma by saving a nice old team from exsistence. No results, and no $$$

[EERO]

I don't like the idea of a diminished grid, but given that a team needs a liason with a major manufacturer to be competitive, it seems that Minardi has lost the present game of Musical Chairs. We have done the math many times on this forum about aligning Manufacures not yet in the Sport with the existant teams. Quite simply, there are two left as you have all stated and niether GM nor VW is heading into F1 soon.

The harsh reality is that the present rules demand teams compete in the full schedule; they demand that teams build their own chasssis: and they demand that teams run only two car teams. This means that when considering the available engines out there, we can anticipate future grids of six cars, Ford, Mercedes and Fiat(Ferrari)as both Honda and BMW are stricken by rumors of takeovers.

SL's idea of having Bernie "buy" or fund Minardi and pressure Ford or Mercedes to ante up with last year's engine is spot-on.

Pressure should be put on Mercedes to support another team. Ferrari has assumed more than their share of responsibility.

[Valve Bounce]

We are all looking in the wrong direction. There is only one person who could save Minardi - Bill Gates. He could buy Minardi with his petty cash. He would have the latest software and hardware that the other teams could only dream of. And for an engine, obviously he would buy the firm who owns the team with the best engine, and Minardi would be at the front of the grid pronto. I will leave it to your imagination how he could get the driver of his choice. No problemo.

[Motorsport Online]

Why dont we ALL buy Minardi ? If everyone who is registered to the Ten Tenths forums put up £25000 we could own half the team. Or failing that all we need is 50000 owners at a few Grand each and the team will be running halfway up the grid.

Lets fork out the money and buy Minardi. Or at least sponsor the poor buggers. You want sympathetic sponsors then lets all sponsor them. There's 2000 people registered here, and I'm sure that with site addons from other fan bases plus a chance of a good push on advertising bringing us up to say 5000 hard core peeps, with around £1000 to spend a year then we'd have £5mill to play with, and that would be enough to help those wiley italians get a little leg up.

Plus if Minardi were to register as a charity we could get Gordon Brown to cough up some wedge as well.

[Speed Demon]

If I had £25,000 sitting around spare, I'd probably be running a racing team... However, as it's twice my yearly wage, I can only dream!

[Liz]

I wonder how much money we could raise among us if we put our minds to it? And I wonder what it would cost to get our logo on a Minardi?

[Speed Demon]

Interesting thought, Liz.

I remember a few years ago, there was a documentary on British TV following the McLaren team for a year, during the 1993 season.

It was fascinating to get a glimpse behind the scenes, especially as Senna was still with the team and not particularly happy with his lot at the time.

Funniest of all, however, were the numerous occassions on which the grand whinger launched into Ron-speak. One programme focussed on marketing, while they were introducing a new sponsor to the team. They carried out a lot of research, brown-nosed loads, wined and dined the company directors and negotiated the sponsorship fees. The whole programme of about 30 minutes was devoted to this process. The final scene was the unveiling of the new sponsor's epic logos (for which I think the Italian Wine company was paying about £1 million). After all the hype, it turned out that they were about 3cm high and positioned on the wing mirrors!

I rather think any sponsorship we got at Minardi would be more prominent for the money!!

[Gt_R]

Let's be the main title sponsor..(have the 2yr old Ford named after us?)... jus imagine next year, in the news....

"Team Ten-tenth Minardi Motorsports scored a terrific first 1-2 in home ground, after dominating the race from pole position.... Rumi wants to thank every member of the team for this unforgetable experience, not to mention the members of Ten-tenths for their huge cash investment which saved the team from extinction and made this a win come true...."

[Willie the Pimp]

I think good old uncle B will be glad to see the rear end of
Minardi, then he could let some american teems on-board
lets face it Minardi are dull,boring stuff like that, Get some big-time hollywood style yankie outfit (you just know what Americans are like) in then you have just grabed a huge chunk of doller. Here's a thought cheerleaders track-side..mmm

[Liz]

We don't need to hire cheerleaders for Minardi. We have our own air horns!

I think I'll write to Minardi and ask how much it'd take to get our logo on their cars. Maybe we don't have that much, but .... maybe we do!

And maybe they'll invite us to dinner to celebrate - they are universally agreed to have the best cook in Formula One.

[EERO]

Liz, I haven't got alot, but I could rustle up some cash-count me in, even for a small amount.

[Liz]

I wrote and asked them. I said we don't have a million dollars and lots of us are students, but there are lots of us and we just want to know if it's possible as we would like to support Minardi in some visible way.

If you light candles at your church, or if you could light a candle at your house and just think good thoughts about Minardi, send them a note and tell them where you are and that you lit a candle for them. Think of all the candles all around the world spelling out MINARDI. Cool, eh?

I can raise some money somehow. All the years of wedding, shower, baby and graduation gifts with nothing in return should count for something when the chips are down. That's a start. I have an 82 year old uncle with more money than God and a great sense of humour, and an auntie with Texaco money ... And the vision of a perfect plate of pasta in the paddock will spur me on!