JULY 4, 2011

Spanish investment firm takes majority of HRT

Thesan Capital, a Spanish private investment firm, has acquired a majority interest in the Hispania Formula One team from Jose Ramon Carabente.

The team was originally founded by former F1 driver Adrian Campos under the Campos Meta name, but when the team ran into financial difficulties before it's debut last season, Spanish businessman Carabente took control and rebranded the team, forming a tie-up with Collin Kolles to run the cars from his operation in Germany.

There has been speculation in recent weeks of possible restructuring of the ownership in the team, and the team announced today that a majority shareholding of Grupo Inversor Hispania, the team's parent holding company, has been acquired. Thesan Capital is a Madrid-based investment company that was formed by founded by Jose Luis Macho and Santiago Corral in 2008 in order to develop investment opportunities for investors in the Spanish market.

The statement said, "The Spanish investment group will lead the development of Hispania Racing in the upcoming years, maintaining the current team and directors, which is one of the main assets of the company, and will try to develop and search for opportunities to optimise and improve the performance of the team in the upcoming seasons, alongside progressively making the team more Spanish and definitively settling the team in Spain."

"The Thesan Capital team, who consider the acquisition of Hispania Racing as an opportunity to enter a sector with great prospects of growing, will work with the aim of strengthening the strategic management of the group."

There are suggestions that team principal Colin Kolles is set to leave the operation, but nothing was mentioned in today's announcement.

Last week the team announced that Red Bull protege Daniel Ricciardo will replace Indian Narain Karthikeyan at the British GP this coming weekend. The deal coming about with Red Bull paying HRT for the seat in order to gain the Australian driver some race experience.