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Force India is the latest incarnation of Jordan, the Silverstone-based team Eddie Jordan sold to Alex Shnaider in January 2005, thereby bringing the Irish team's F1 endeavours to an end after fourteen years. For that season the team continued to run as Jordan before morphing into Midland for 2006.
It was in September 2006, during the Italian GP weekend, that Shnaider sold the team to Spyker Cars NV, the Dutch high performance car manufacturer. One year later, days after the 2007 Belgian GP, it was officially confirmed that Spyker was selling the team to a consortium led by Indian businessman Vijay Mallya and Michiel Mol for 88m euros.
Billionaire Mallya, who enjoys a high profile in India, where he is an MP in addition to being chairman of both the Federation of Motorsports Clubs in India (FMSCI) and Motorsport Association of India (MAI), is keen to raise his country's profile, and in addition to purchasing Spyker and renaming the team Force India, has been instrumental in getting India its own Grand Prix.
Under new ownership, Spyker saw out the remaining races of the 2007 season with a new livery but retained Sutil and Yamamoto, the German getting the new relationship off to the best possible start by scoring a point in Japan, the first race under the team's new ownership.
Over the course of the two final tests of 2007 the team ran a number of hopefuls as it sought to define its line-up for 2008, amongst those pounding the tarmac at Barcelona and Jerez were Giancarlo Fisichella, Ralf Schumacher, Christian Klien, Tonio Liuzzi, Franck Montagny, Roldan Rodriguez and Adrian Sutil, who seemed a shoe-in for one of the 2008 seats anyway.
After weeks of speculation, at a special ceremony in Mumbai on 10 January, Mallya confirmed his line-up, with Fisichella and Sutil taking the race seats and Liuzzi assuming the position of test driver.
Mallya was at pains to warn that race fans should not expect too much too soon, however, he was also keen to point out that Force India is a descendent of Jordan, a proven GP winner, with many of the original personnel still in place.
Sadly, that it the whole point. Yes, Jordan did win GPs, indeed, in 1999 Heinz-Harald Frentzen finished third in the Drivers' Championship. However, F1 was changing, like the (English football) Premiership winning is becoming more about how much money you have than anything else. In all honesty, Eddie got out just in time.
Mallya is no fool, and surely it won't be too long before he experiences the famous F1 adage at close hand; how do you make a small fortune from F1, answer, start with a large one.
Unless Mallya is very, very wealthy, and unless he is willing to spend a considerable proportion of that wealth, he cannot hope to compete with the likes of Red Bull and Toyota, far less Ferrari and McLaren. Indeed, despite his claim that the team's budget will be $120m in 2008 ($50m up on 2007) we hear that there is already concern about the outfit's finances.
Maybe we're wrong, maybe Mallya is the man to turn the team's fortunes. If not expect another change of ownership within the next twelve to twenty-four months.
Statistics - Prior to 2008 Season
Drivers' Titles: 0
Constructors' Titles: 0
Seasons in F1: 0
Grand Prix: 0
Wins: 0
Points: 0
Poles: 0
Fastest Laps: 0
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