MOTORSPORT: China eyes F1 team

The communist nation, the world's most populous, has hosted a Grand Prix in Shanghai for 11 years.

Now a top Chinese motorsport official has been quoted saying that "in the next one or two years China will have its own F1 team".

Veteran F1 correspondent Joe Saward reported on his blog this week that Wei Di, the director of the country's Automobile and Motorcycling Administrative Centre, had said that a Chinese group was bidding to acquire an F1 team.

The teams most likely to be susceptible to takeover are the two which have not scored a world championship point this season, Swiss-based Sauber and financially-stricken Caterham, based in Britain and now owned by a mysterious consortium of Swiss and Middle Eastern investors.

Sauber, which once challenged the powerhouse teams in the constructors' world championship, has lost competitiveness in recent times, and mooted Russian investment appears not to have materialised.

Coincidentally, Sauber will give Canadian-born Chinese driver Adderly Fong a test in one of its two-year-old C31 cars next week at the Ricardo Torno circuit in Valencia, Spain. The 24-year-old Fong has competed in several single-seater championships in Asia and Europe.

China has had others in and around the F1 scene as test and reserve drivers without cracking it for a race drive. Ma Qing Hua, reportedly heavily backed by authorities in Shanghai, was associated with the now-defunct Hispania Racing Team and more recently with Caterham, for which he drove in a Friday practice session at this year's Chinese GP.

Dutch-born Tung Ho Pin was the Renault (now Lotus) team reserve driver in 2010 and is now part of the China Racing squad in the new electric open-wheeler world championship, Formula E.

Teams in that series are using a control chassis initially, but China Racing aims to build its own Formula E cars within three years with the support of Chinese electric vehicle manufacturers. China Racing's team manager is Spaniard Adrian Campos, an ex-F1 driver who initially headed the failed Hispania project.

Saward said Wei Di had not revealed who was behind the idea of a Chinese F1 team.

He said Wei "heads the state-run sports organisation which serves as the permanent administrative body of the Federation of Automobile Sports [FASC], the country's Federation Internationale de l'Automobile [FIA]-linked sporting federation" (the equivalent of Australia's CAMS).

"It was established in 2002 in order to organise, direct and promote automobile and motorcycle sports in China."

China's state council announced this week its intention to grow the country's sporting sector into an $800 billion industry by 2025 – encouraging private investment but with government support – as part of what is being called its "new economy".