Super Aguri : buyout / collapse

[Tom H]

Sad to see another team go, I guess. They managed to do so much with very little and I have nothing but respect for them.

[Bob Brown]

R.I.P. Super Aguri F1


I now have 1 more reason not to watch F1.
Thanks Honda, Nick Fry, and Bernie.

[joseff]

It certainly is the wrong Honda team that went under.

=D> =D> =D>

Nick. Fry. Go. Home.

The whole Super Aguri affair started with him sacking Sato, and now it is he who started a whole new Honda PR mess. Ross Brawn FTW.

[Giblet]

Um Honda and Nick Fry went above and beyond what they needed to, and Bernie helped 'float' SA for the last race.

Try blaming Max, he is the one who sets the rules, as in no customer cars, which is why they are gone now.

[gcdugas]

Should we start to count the days left for STR? If indeed the "climate" over customer cars has changed, what future do they have? How fast can they obtain full fabrication capabilities? I suppose something remains of Minardi, but what? I would suspect most of it is outdated and that whatever design staff they had was made redundant when they started to race the Newey designed customer cars. Oops. I remember now, they are "vastly different". Well Gerhard, let's see how different things will be now that the noose is tightening next year.

Unless I am wrong, we must have 20 cars on the grid and there now exists a possibility for some teams to run the infamous "third cars" with only two getting points. Suppose it comes down to Lewis, Nando and Kimi in the last race of 2009 and Ferrari have Gene in a third car. Though he cannot score points, he can still crash out Lewis or Nando "Senna style" to help Kimi. I just don't see third cars as a solution.

[Ciro Pabón]

SA mentioned explicitly the role of Nick Fry. I think that the embarrassment Honda had last year with SA beating them until October played a major part in this affair. Here you have a sour quote:

“When they see that you’re competitive, the Piranha Club tries to kill the small fish. Because the fish can become too big, then it’s a problem.”

-- Daniel Audetto, SA team director --

AFAIK, SA claimed intellectual rights to the chassis and that was approved by FIA.

[gcdugas]

Um Honda and Nick Fry went above and beyond what they needed to, and Bernie helped 'float' SA for the last race.

Try blaming Max, he is the one who sets the rules, as in no customer cars, which is why they are gone now.

Well I would not blame Max for that. However I would jointly blame Max and Bernie who were so sure that they could strong arm the teams into accepting customer cars against the plain language of Concorde. Rightly so, Williams and Midland/Spyker/Force India resisted this. The first casualty was Prodrive. But think of this... Prodrive gets year old McLarens, races and finishes 3rd or 4th in the constructor's C'ship or even just in the driver's C'ship.... Is that right? You know sponsors could care less about the constructor's C'ship, they just want to get their decals on front running cars. Why would Coca-cola (or whomever) give a dime to make a team named "Team Coca-cola Force India" and run in last place when for a similar investment they could run in 3rd or 4th place regularly in "Team Coca-cola Prodrive" cars?

FW and Collin Kolles were right to threaten civil arbitration. Bernie and Max knew they couldn't defend their position in civil court either. Bernie made some gestures to change the distribution of the winnings but this was too little and would never amend the inequity. All this did was to allow the cars on the grid for the first few races of 2006 when the furor was great and real civil action was immanent. In essence Bernie said: "Trust me, I will make it right" but that was really impossible. I am surprised it lasted this long.

The complexities and inequity of a "third car" solution may weigh in favor of the teams winking at STR for a bit. However, should they even score more points than a few tolerable crumbs, then we will start to hear objections once again.

So the promises of a customer car era were made when there was uncertainty as to their ability to keep those promises. There is the place to assign blame.

It seems that going the Toyota route and building a team from scratch is what it will take for VW/Porsche/Audi or whomever. Williams' stock just went up!

There are better returns on investment to be had in LMP, DTM. And I remind you of my warning for F1... If the rules aren't loosened up to allow for more innovation, the LMP will transcend F1 as the pinnacle of technology in motorsport. Look at how much PR Audi is getting from their R-10 diesel cars. Not just winning, but for innovation and points with the greenies.

F1 spends enormous sums on finding a tenth of a tenth with a new wing flap. Who really cares that a "bridge front wing" is viewed as innovative? It has absolutely no marketing or R&D value to the automobile industry. If the FIA hadn't over reacted to the FW13, by now regular road cars would have highly developed active suspension, highly developed CVTs, perhaps Renault would have pioneered electro-magneto servo valves by now etc. Maybe even some revolutionary "six stroke" engines or rotary valved engines would have been researched. (poppet valves are horribly inefficient and represent the greatest opportunity for thermal gains) If F1 were to encourage innovation rather than strangle it, we would all be better off and F1 would have far more relevance to the average Joe. In other words, these are things that are a genuine advance to the automotive world, have great marketing PR value and represent a genuine overall contribution to mankind.

[WhiteBlue]

Um Honda and Nick Fry went above and beyond what they needed to, and Bernie helped 'float' SA for the last race.

Try blaming Max, he is the one who sets the rules, as in no customer cars, which is why they are gone now.

objections to most of this:

Fry only tried to destroy SA, not to help them

Bernie did not float them for Barcelona, the money was given by Weigl

Mosley did what he could in the rules to allow customer cars, in fact the FIA specifically made the 2008 rules for customer cars

the established teams led by Williams agreed between themselves that they would not tolerate customer cars and would include that in the next concord, which is now hanging over F1 and killed off Prodrive and Super Aguri. the mad thing is that at the time speaking no valid concord is existing. but the threat to continue the constructor requirent as in the expired concord is doing the job.

[gcdugas]

AFAIK, SA claimed intellectual rights to the chassis and that was approved by FIA.

Is that why Honda had the cars returned to their Brackley facilities earlier last week? I am sure that Aguri had some arrangement to get around the rules but the fact is, they were RA107s wearing Aguri labels only. Maybe a new front wing or some aero tweaks here and there.

[Conceptual]

Who cares?

SA was one of the highlights of 2007, and now that they are gone, I find my desire to tune in this week is much lower.

And I can guarantee that I will never own another Honda.

Whatever tho, life goes on.

Chris

[WhiteBlue]

the legal construct for SA and STR is the existence of an independant design company which supplies both teams with slightly different chassis albeit cosmetical differences

the reason for Honda F1 being able to hold the SA cars is that they are colateral to the debt. apparently Honda Japan has piped the money and supplies through Honda F1.

the customer car problem could have had many solutions because in essense it was a money problem. if the costs for new entrants are high the value of the existing constrructors is higher. so they increased the entry barriers to protect their value.

customers could have been restricted to year olds chassis and certain independant content. the distribution of prize money could have been changed and all kinds of compromise could have been thinkable. it was primarily a Bernie and Frank issue. the big manufacturer based teams had a good source of money and would have gone both ways.

for STR it isn't a problem of finding the resources. that could be accomplished as the build up at BMW-Sauber has shown. it is the problem of finding the big sponsor who is prepared to inject 100 mil $ anually into a brand campaign and aquire half a team for the purpose. Red Bull is doing it on that scale and Philip Moris/Ferrari, Merc, BMW, Toyota, Renault, Honda and Kingfisher/Mallya are also prepared to chip in at least so much. Bagur is an unknown. Gerhard has a tough job at the moment.

[dumrick]

the legal construct for SA and STR is the existence of an independant design company which supplies both teams with slightly different chassis albeit cosmetical differences

Sorry, but I don't find the parallel between SA and STR. SA ran rebadged Hondas. STR gets its design from Red Bull Technologies, who isn't a F1 team. In fact, if F1 teams were forced to design their own chassis, Red Bull Racing would be in the exact same position as STR, they buy the design elsewhere (and probably get to own the intelectual rights for each chassis, even though the design is the same).

If SA was created to give a seat to Sato, does this mean that Sato lost his PR value in these 2 years?

[Bob Brown]

the legal construct for SA and STR is the existence of an independant design company which supplies both teams with slightly different chassis albeit cosmetical differences

Sorry, but I don't find the parallel between SA and STR. SA ran rebadged Hondas. STR gets its design from Red Bull Technologies, who isn't a F1 team. In fact, if F1 teams were forced to design their own chassis, Red Bull Racing would be in the exact same position as STR, they buy the design elsewhere (and probably get to own the intelectual rights for each chassis, even though the design is the same).

If SA was created to give a seat to Sato, does this mean that Sato lost his PR value in these 2 years?

Sato definitely did not lose his PR value, but even 1 man alone cannot sustain an entire team with his PR money, unless that man is currently Schumi

[waynes]

expect Jenson to walk at the end of the season and hopefully replace Massa

all falling apart for the men from Japan

[mx_tifoso]

expect Jenson to walk at the end of the season and hopefully replace Massa

On what basis?

It would be great to see factual and statistical support for the many highly and purely subjective statements which people tend to make out of a pure and sudden emotional state of being. Or nationality may take a large part in many of the baseless statements as well... who knows.