APRIL 1, 2006

Who are the new teams?

The announcement that the FIA has received 22 entries for 2008 is not really a surprise as there is no real commitment necessary at the moment. The various dossiers need now to be examined by the FIA in order to see who is really sensible - and who is not.

The confirmed applications come from Prodrive and from Paul Stoddart. In addition we believe that Craig Pollock and Eddie Jordan have put in entries and we expect that Eddie Irvine has also made an application. In addition there are a number of GP2 teams which would like to move up into F1. The most likely of these are Racing Engineering from Spain and DPR Direxiv, both of which are believed to have very decent budgets for an F1 programme. The other entries are probably more speculative with the likes of BCN Competicion, ART Grand Prix, Arden International, DAMS, Carlin Motorsport, FMS International and Piquet Sports likely to have taken a punt. Whether or not these organisations can find the money to compete is quite another matter but it will certainly be useful for the FIA that so many teams have tried to join in, as it will allow the federation to show that F1 does not need the car manufacturers.

With just one slot available, it is always possible that the FIA might consider that MF1 Racing to be a less convincing candidate than one of the proposed teams. The most likely candidate to succeed is probably Prodrive, although there is no evidence of any money, but we also suspect that one of the Spanish teams will be able to find the money on the back of Fernando Alonso's success in recent years.