AUGUST 24, 2006

Prodrive still shopping

A puff of publicity this week about Prodrive's talks with other F1 teams reveals that the new F1 team will, as previously reported, be a customer operation when it starts testing next year and in the foreseeable future. The team plans to be building its own chassis within five years but reckons that as a new team with limited financial resources must get the most number of results for the smallest amount of money - and that, thanks to rule changes in 2008, means buying a chassis and an engine. The news also reveals that, as yet, the team has not secured a deal with any of the existing teams. The reason for this is that while some of the teams are happy to consider such a deal as the additional money would be useful, the downside is that the practical considerations involved are huge as F1 cars are complicated beasts and teams cannot simply build parts and sell them on and in some cases would need to build the pieces in-house and thus would need to expand production. The other point is that teams might not wish to give away the technology they have by selling chassis to another team, particularly as it is clear that Prodrive would use that information as the foundation for later concepts. Thus finding a chassis supplier might not be quite as easy a task as some would think.