The final bow for HRT?

25/11/2012

Mat Coch writes:

After three seasons in Formula One it is expected that HRT will tomorrow close its doors for the last time. The beleaguered back of the grid team has come in for some stick during its time in the sport, but to its credit it kept working away as though oblivious to the criticism and the sceptics.

HRT has not been successful, but it's fought hard against incredible odds, and for that alone we must give it credit. The team has worked as hard as the likes of Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren, with far less, and managed to develop a car that is somewhere in the ballpark. That is to be commended.

At the beginning of the season things looked to have turned a corner for the squad. Fresh investors allowed it the opportunity to have some ambition, but in recent weeks those aspirations have been cruelly squashed by harsh economic realities.

If anyone is to blame for HRT's predicament it is the corporate investors that decided to buy the team last July. It would perhaps have been better to allow the team to dwindle away rather than fill its staff with false hope.

HRT will not leave Formula One because it has gone bust, it will leave because Spanish bankers decided they could not make any money from Formula One. Closing the team and firing the staff is easier for the number crunchers than making the team successful.

Formula One is a multi-billion dollar sport but investment funds have no place owning teams. It is short sighted and naïve to suggest they know how to run a team better than those engaged in the sport already. The only way to make a small fortune in motor sport is to start with a large one.

For the moment we don't know for certain if HRT will bow out, though reports over the last week make it hard to imagine it won't. However, we should at very least give the squad's hard working staff the appreciation they deserve; they've done incredible things with what they had, a point very few realise and fewer still acknowledge.

While Pitpass is understandably proud of its "fully independent" tag, we have to admit a certain fondness for the Spanish team, fully understanding its plight as it took on the giants. Sadly, despite the rhetoric, passion counts for little these days, especially in the eyes of the beancounters.

"I hope we can sit here with you next year and have another interview," team boss Luis Perez-Sala told Pitpass in March. "Maybe we are going to be better, or worse, or at the same level, it's a possibility! We will see."

I for one hope I get that interview, and that this article does not ultimately prove to be the team's obituary.