JANUARY 24, 2006

Super Aguri and Menard

An interesting piece of information has come to light in recent days regarding the Super Aguri F1 operation.

An interesting piece of information has come to light in recent days regarding the Super Aguri F1 operation. It had been thought Aguri Suzuki and his backers had acquired the Leafield site from John Menard but it seems that Menard Competition Technologies and Menard Engineering Ltd are both still in full operation and remain owners of the site. It seems that the current deal with Super Aguri is simply a rental deal for space for an assembly area and design offices and the composite manufacturing facilities belong to Menard rather than Suzuki and that its services are being paid for by the new F1 team. There is at least one other business based in the centre which was once the design and engineering centre for TWR and the Arrows F1 team where cars such as the Aston Martin DB7 and Vanquish, the Jaguar XJ220 and Renault Sport Clio V6 were developed. This company is called Hartham and was established by former Reynard engineers Andre Brown and James Painter who are working on the development of a GTP sportscar for use in the Britsport and other prototype series.

The importrant question, therefore, is what Aguri is planning to do in the longer term as the team does not appear to have access to the facilities it will need for the longterm future and one must suppose that either there are plans to buy a permanent site or to build one.