Nick Fry among potential Honda buyers
Just over a month after Honda’s shock decision to withdraw from Formula 1, hopes are still alive that the Brackley based team will be rescued in time for the 2009 Formula 1 season.
Representatives of the outfit currently known as Honda Racing F1 attended the Heathrow meeting of the FOTA team alliance on Thursday, and afterwards made a point of distributing the joint press release.
In the statement, FOTA said all other F1 teams “wished to express their support for the entrant currently known as Honda and they will agree to any name change registered”.
A former boss of the team, however, Prodrive’s David Richards, indicated at the Autosport International show in Birmingham that he is now less interested in becoming the new owner.
“I just personally feel that the current environment is too unsettled,” Richards said on Thursday, adding that the “burden of overhead” is still a problem for teams despite moves to cut costs.
But Honda Racing’s current chief executive, Nick Fry, insists that about a dozen serious buyers are still in the frame, while the Daily Telegraph claims that the 52-year-old Briton himself may be positioning as one of them.
The newspaper said the Japanese manufacturer Honda is prepared to spend more than €70m to “facilitate a smooth takeover”, which would “buy time for Fry to find new sponsors”.
The Telegraph also said another serious bidder, the Greek shipping tycoon Achilleas Kallakis, “expressed dissatisfaction” with the reception to his interest and may have joined Richards in going cold on a buyout.
Fry did not return calls for comment.
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Read more: David Richards says F1 costs are still too high - and he’s not buying Honda
So one day after Autosport drops Kallakis’ name, the Telegraph duly says he’s out of the running. Wow, that was quick.
Fry wants to buy it for himself, eh? Well, at least if it bombs again, the failure will be all his own. It would just be so ironic: one of the guys who probably helped precipitate Honda’s downfall might just end up being the last guy standing at Brackley.
I’m getting a sense of deja vous with this. Wasn’t it basically down to Honda in Japan not liking any of the potential buyers that Super Aguri went under… I hope the same doesn’t happen with HondaF1. I suppose if the rumour is true and Nick Fry is a potential buyer then you have to assume he’d have Honda Japan’s backing…
Please no shipping tycoons … We need more racing people running F1 teams, not more billionaires …
milos - mind you, Dietrich Mateschitz is a billionaire, and yet he’s done more for F1 in the last decade than many other racing people.
But then he is a billionaire with a great interest and track record in investing his money in extreme, alternative, and high-tech sports, rather than someone who sells boats or owns an airline and happens to have a lot of money.
I’m not going to be fussy under this current economic crisis, so anyone with the money to blow err spend on F1 please stand forward. We need a decent and respectable amount of cars on the track to make a grid of integrity and the racing real and legitimate.
I’m disappointed Paul Stoddart hasn’t seemed to show any interest in HondaF1…
@Adrian - Honda has wiped its hand off the team and as such will have no say in who the new buyers should be, they have only promised all support in smooth transition (meaning paperwork) to the new owners.
That was not the case in case of Super Aguri finding backers to keep the team afloat. In that story way things were coming out Nick Fry was calling shots on behalf of Honda Management in Japan. Aguri Suzuki’s parting shot also implied that Fry was one of the responsible parties who was blocking Aguri’s potential backers as “not feasible” ” not serious” “not fitting in Honda’s scheme of things” as different reasons he always gave the press. Press had raised questions on Fry’s role in demise of Super Aguri as well
About the Main Story here -
I had commented on this Forum before as well, If Nick is indeed here for Love of Racing and not to make bucks (as the perception about him in Honda Days was),and if indeed he is that confident that the team is headed in right direction under technical stewardship of Ross Brawn, he should put his personal fortune (made from Honda days) on line. If the team shows results backers will follow. Its good If Nick’s monies are involved, there will be more accountability in the operations. When Japanese Monies were involved, the professionalism of the Brit Management looking after the team was sadly a notch down, with no governance on way things were working in Brakely, Tokyo seemed to have hardly any control on the team
They key to all this is obviously sponsorship, can Nick Fry get the sponsorship in place to finance this season? Are there big enough “New” sponsors ready to throw their money into the cauldron at the moment. I agree with Chaz, there is a very thin line between blow and spend in F1 at the moment, and I’m not so sure that sponsors see value at the moment when most companies are consolidating and not looking to make new investments.
Surely if Nick Fry has a part in the decision on who buys Honda’s F1 operations, he can scupper any other buyer’s chances and put himself in a good position to buy? Is that fair?
@Ade - At least with his money on line, he will be more accountable and meticulous. Given the past performance, he will obviously prefer to blow away someone else’s monies that his own, so he will not scupper someone else’s proposal and push his envelop ahead
I don’t care who buys Honda, as long as they are on the grid in Melbourne…
What’s bugging me is that there’s apparently these shedloads of different groups who want to buy Honda, and yet the two people everyone was putting as favourites - Carlos Slim and Dave Richards - have both said nay.
I’m not sure what that says - either that the people predicting the favourites are hopelessly off, or that the quality/viability of the other bidders is even less, but it sure doesn’t fill me with confidence.
And as Pitpass points out, be quite an interesting conflict of interest Fry would have if he were bidding for the team he was at least nominally still running.
@Robert - The Conflict of interest made sense in different times when internal bidder was used as a ploy to mark up the cost of product on sale ( Like the sidekicks of howlers in flea markets , who stand in crowd to raise the bid). But this is sellers market and not buyers, so in case Nick increases his bid, the baby will fall in his lap. As I have mentioned before Spending from his own pocket will be last thing Nick would like to do
On separate note, Having worked long enough in corporate world and having being part of UK organization which was involved in sale of some assets, its perfect practice to have a internal bid, where group of internal stake holders are confident to take organization in right direction and are hence thinking to buyout.
After seeing DR and Mimi or whatever his name is, pull out, I’ve grown quite pessimistic about whether the Honda will make it to Melbourne. But Kudos to Honda for taking the initiative and accepting to keep the team afloat and fully operational until March - that’s the kind of attitude that would certainly help to be bought - and just generally for this crash.
As for the potential buyers, to be honest after DR pulling out, apart from Campos, who would be another great one (and maybe Schumacher too :P) I don’t care if its Greek yachtsman, Arab oil tycoons, or Chinese industrialists….in the interest of the sport and the team, it needs survive 2009.
P.S: Concerning Nick Fry - I was certainly not a fan of his leadership in BAR/Honda - he always seemed like a business man and not a racer. But if he were to put a sum of his own fortunes onto the table to buyout the team along with supporting investors and incoming sponsorship - well…my respect for him would shoot through the roof!
With Ross Brawn at the joint-top, the team could surely go up after this transitional period.
Considering the money that DIC are putting into Manchester City it’d be nice if they could spare a few million for Honda, they shouldn’t have too much problem getting sponsors as there’s plenty of companies raking it in in Dubai who aren’t suffering in the recession.
I agree with you about the team Smitty, with Ross Brawn at the helm combined with them starting designing this years car at the beginning of last season should mean they should do ok, even if they don’t actually build the new car till they’ve sorted out the new engine.
Jenson’s a decent driver too and if they didn’t want Rubens they could use the other seat for an up and coming Arab driver, I know we don’t hear about many of them but there’s loads of them racing some very fast cars over there.
beneboy it’s not DIC who own Manchester City…
DIC were courting Liverpool and pulled out of the Super Aguri rescue…
Man City is owned by Abu Dhabi United group…
And Abu Dhabi is where the new GP will be this year…
You’re right mate, I apologise.
Makes even more sense with Abu Dhabi though, they’ve built the track so may as well have a team to race there.
UPDATE!!!!! I am in talks with Honda to by the team, I will rebrand it MAD Racing LOL. Seems like everyone and their brother is in or has been in talks to by Honda.
THinking about what Too Good says makes sense actually, andmay be itwouldn’t be a bad thing if Nick Fry took over the team. It would likely mean that he’d be more concerned with succeeding when his own money is at stake..