MOTORSPORT: Another F1 team on the skids

The second four-day Formula One pre-season test begins on Thursday, with ominous signs for another team little more than three weeks out from the Australian Grand Prix.

Force India missed the first test at Jerez in Spain and won’t take its new model car, the VJM08, to Barcelona this week.

Instead it will run last year’s VJM07 there so that it can at least sample Pirelli’s latest F1 tyres, leaving the team headed by Vijay Mallya, an Indian once a billionaire, only the final test, also in Barcelona and starting on February 26, to trial its latest car before Melbourne.

Force India may be on the grid at Melbourne’s Albert Park — making 18 cars to start the championship, four less than last year - but many within F1 wonder whether it has a future, despite respectable results last season.
Lotus and Sauber are under clouds too, but not as dark as those over Force India.

Caterham and Marussia already are gone, although there is a desperate attempt to revive Marussia under the name Manor. Don’t hold your breath.

Force India began life as Jordan, a team that won four GPs and finished third in the 1999 world championship. A decade ago it became Midland, then Spyker.

Then it was acquired by Mallya, at the time known in India as “The King of Good Times”. Not any more.

Mallya’s empire has billions of dollars of debts, yet somehow he has kept Force India’s wheels turning.

He also owns Bangalore’s Royal Challengers cricket team in the Indian Premier League whose roster includes Indian Test captain Virat Kohli, South African captain AB De Villiers, West Indies superstar Chris Gayle and Australian bowler Mitchell Starc.

Mallya had ambitions of being India’s Richard Branson, but his Kingfisher Airlines collapsed in 2012.

His United Spirits, the foundation of his fortune, has been swallowed by Britain’s Diageo — the world’s largest producer of spirits and a major producer of beer and wine, created out of the merger 18 years ago of Guinness and Grand Metropolitan.

India’s online business magazine FirstBiz once posed the question whether Mallya was the country’s worst businessman.

Somewhere along the line an even bigger name in Indian business, Subrata Roy, became a 42.85 per cent owner of Force India, even though there is no evidence he has any interest in F1.

Roy’s Sahara conglomerate was more synonymous with the Indian Test cricket team until late 2013.

His string of mansions include replicas of the White House and Buckingham Palace, but he has been in jail for more than a year over financial dealings, with authorities demanding $US1.6 billion — more than $A2 billion — in bail to free him.

Roy has been trying to negotiate, from a special deal room created for him within the Tihar prison in Delhi, the sale of plush hotels — the Grosvenor in London and the Plaza (featured in The Great Gatsby) and Dream in New York — to raise the money to set himself free.

Dutch entrepreneur Michiel Mol also has a small stake in Force India, the parent company of which is Luxembourg-based Orange India Holdings.

The team’s auditors raised grave doubts about its finances late last year after it posted net losses of £38.5 million for 2013 and £33.4 million for 2012 — more than $A140 million combined.

“There is no evidence available to us to confirm that Orange India will receive the continued support it needs from its shareholders and in turn that that continued support will therefore be available to Force India,” auditors Grant Thornton said.

“This material uncertainty may cast significant doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

Force India was sixth in last year’s world championship and has retained talented German Nico Hulkenberg and Mexican Sergio Perez, who has shown spasmodic flashes of brilliance, for this year.

They were ninth and 10th respectively in last season’s drivers’ championship, with Perez third in the Bahrain GP — the team’s first podium since Giancarlo Fisichella’s second place at Spa in Belgium almost five years earlier.

Force India was the first team to launch its 2015 car ˆ on January 21 in Mexico City, for sponsorship reasons — but German F1 correspondent Ralf Bach has reported on his f1-insider.com since that the team is insvolvent and facing collapse.

Bach said the delays in getting the VJM08 on track were because “important parts suppliers have not been paid”.

Force India’s deputy team principal Bob Fernley has tried to dismiss fears over the team’s future.

“We will be in Melbourne for the start of the season - there’s no doubt about that,” Fernley said.

“Yes, testing with the new car will have been limited, but we are doing everything possible to make sure we arrive in Australia in reasonable shape and with as many miles on the car as possible.”

Apart from Force India’s own problems, most teams are feeling the effects of what many see as a financial crisis in F1.

The sport’s costs are way too high, with a season’s supply of the hybrid power units introduced last year costing up to $40 million — and Force India uses the best engine, the Mercedes.

While F1 has huge revenues they are distributed inequitably, with the bulk of the profits going to private equity company CVC that is the largest shareholder in the business while midfield and tail-end teams get comparative smidgens.

Ferrari, in particular, and other top teams do well out of the money pool, while the venues that host races (except Monaco) pay massively for the pleasure and get none in return.

CVC is resented for ripping hundreds of millions of dollars out of the sport without bringing anything to it.
It could be said its only contribution has been to continue to employ Bernie Ecclestone, who unquestionably knows more about F1 than anyone on earth, as chief executive.

But there are big questions about Ecclestone’s such an asset anymore — at 84, reluctant to embrace a changing world, especially social media, and repeatedly having to fight off legal actions.

Ecclestone, historically F1’s great fixer, admitted late last season that he didn’t have the magic wand to solve the financial mess.

“The problem is that there is too much money being distributed badly,” he said. “That’s probably my fault. I know what’s wrong, but don’t know how to fix it.”