JUNE 12, 2009

No Prodrive, no Lola

Two names that are missing from the list are those of Prodrive and Lola. Both were believed to have strong cases for an application and thus their non-appearance is interesting.

Two names that are missing from the list are those of Prodrive and Lola. Both were believed to have strong cases for an application and thus their non-appearance is interesting. This does not mean that they will not be on the final entry in a week from now. It may be that the FIA is holding them back to maintain pressure on the existing teams to leave FOTA. It has been clear for some time that Max Mosley is not bothered whether the automobile manufacturers stay or not and he may be working on the fact that at least two of them are not going to give up, while at the same time hoping that Ferrari, Brawn and the two Red Bull teams will stick with the FIA. If that were to happen he would need to fill four empty slots and Prodrive and Lola are the teams most likely to get those entries.

It remains to be seen if anything serious will come from Epsilon Euskadi, Team Lotus (Litespeed), Formtech/Brabham, Superfund and N Technology.

One cannot imagine that N Technology would have put in an entry which had no real chance of success and so they must be seen as a dark horse, while Epsilon Euskadi is also a pretty sensible option, at least on paper. Thus it would not be a surprise to see Prodrive, Lola, N Technology and Epsilon Euskadi appearing at a later date, if the manufacturers do walk away.

The pressure this week will be on FOTA to stick together.