12/10/2005
NEWS STORY
Outgoing - and out going - Minardi boss, Paul Stoddart, is dubious as to whether there will be an eleventh team on the grid in 2006.
In the run up to the Japanese Grand Prix, Takuma Sato - who was already aware that he is out of a job in 2006 - announced that he would be driving for a new Honda-backed team. The Japanese manufacturer subsequently admitted that it was 'involved' in such a project, but opted to give little info away.
There are many that believe the talk of a new team was merely a 'sweetener' to appease Japanese race fans, at their home Grand Prix, at a time when Honda had bought out BAR, which had already chosen to dump Sato in favour of Rubens Barrichello. That said, such a cynical ploy (if true) would surely back-fire on Honda, and it seems unfeasible that they might have chosen such a tactic.
Nonetheless, the speculation continues, will there be an eleventh team, who will run it, what chassis will it use and who will drive it?
Paul Stoddart is highly sceptical.
"I don't believe there will be another team in 2006," says Stoddart, according to Reuters. "If there is, it needs to be very independent of BAR.
"I don't doubt for one second that Honda could do it but I find it unusual at the moment that they would do it," he added. "A new team coming in now has to pay the bond and that's not going to get dropped. It also has to have no television money, no say in the formation of Formula One in that they don't have a seat in the technical working group, and they don't have a vote on the Formula One commission.
"It just seems to me to be a very strange time for a new team to come in when we are so close to 2008; you would think they would wait until 2008."
An FIA spokesman recently told Pitpass that the ($48m) bond could be waived, providing any new team wishing to enter F1 can prove that it has a truly sustainable project. However, what Stoddart says about TV money, and the team not having a seat in the technical working group - when Red Bull now effectively has two - is true.
"There are people up and down this pit lane that know full well what is contained within the Concorde agreement that would not take too kindly to a car being a clone of another, before 2008," he said, the Concorde Agreement being a pet subject..
"To just sell the intellectual property rights to one year of one particular car doesn't actually get around the problem. Concorde actually says 'not designed by, manufactured by or owned by another team'.
"Just owning the intellectual property rights to the chassis is one half of it. How you would overcome the 'not designed by, not manufactured by' clause I don't think is that easy."