AUGUST 20, 2009

New teams?

The word on the street in Formula 1 circles is that the FIA will shortly announce two teams to be added to the 2010 entry list. It is not yet clear who these will be but it could be that an entity created by the former BMW Sauber will be one of them. There has been speculation that Prodrive will be one of them and that the Spanish operation Epsilon Euskadi could be another.

From what we hear, the Swiss team is the one struggling for cash as BMW wants more money than is available and there is also the problem of whether or not the team would be allowed to sign the Concorde Agreement, as the deadline for doing so was missed. Both Prodrive and Epsilon are believed to have access to the money needed to run a team but this is dependent on being granted entries, so they are both stuck in a chicken and egg situation with the FIA wanting suitable guarantees and potential sponsors wanting the security of knowing that they are buying into a franchise.

The one piece of good news that we have heard is that BMW may not be planning to simply shut up shop in Hinwil but has a plan to convert the factory into a research and development operation for its new environmentally-friendly models.