MARCH 29, 2002

Reynard and Premier 1

The collapse of Reynard Motorsport has cast serious doubts on the plans for the Premier 1 racing series.

THE collapse of Reynard Motorsport has cast serious doubts on the plans for the Premier 1 racing series. The international racing series with F1-level performance was supposed to kick off this year but was delayed in December when it became clear that all the planning was not sufficiently advanced.

Premier 1's intention was to link motor racing with soccer by having the cars running in the colors - and with sponsorship from - the biggest European soccer clubs. It would cost the clubs involved nothing at all and would pay them a percentage of the money generated by the sale of TV rights and merchandising.

The one-make series announced a deal in December for Reynard Motorsport to produce its chassis but with Reynard going out of business Premier 1 is going to have to look elsewhere.

Dallara was originally bidding for the deal but with Reynard out of the business the Italian company will probably be looking at expanding into CART and into the lucrative Formula Nippon series which will be left without chassis in the long term as a result of Reynard's disappearance.

We understand that one of the creditors of Reynard is the Inland Revenue and there are already rumors that the company's collapse will be investigated.

The Reynard shareholding in BAR is, incidentally, a personal holding belonging to Adrian Reynard and is not an asset of the company. Similarly the Auto Research Center in Indianapolis is also not part of the company which has gone into receivership.