Administrators take over at Caterham

2014 F1 season

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Caterham is now being run by the administrators appointed to handle the team.

Following a public dispute yesterday over control of the F1 team between former owner Tony Fernandes and Engavest, the company which purchased them three months ago, a brief statement today confirmed administrators Smith and Williams are now in charge.

However it remains to be seen if Caterham will be in position to compete in next week’s United States Grand Prix.

The statement from Caterham said: “Following a request of yesterday evening at 21.55hrs CET from Caterham Sports Limited’s administrators and the legal advisors of Mr Tony Fernandes’ related EXIM Bank, representatives of 1MRT/Caterham F1 Team have agreed, with all rights reserved, to hand over management of the Caterham F1 Team to the adminatrator Mr Finbarr O’Connell in the higher interest of allowing the team to continue operating and preparing for the next events.”

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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21 comments on “Administrators take over at Caterham”

  1. Goodbye, Caterham!

    1. I think this is bad for the sport :-(

      1. I don’t see Marussia lasting long now – they’ll spend the whole of next year racing themselves

    2. @watty I finally waved goodbye in 2013, after no progression whatsoever. Bad personnel and waisted money caused their debacle, even Virgin/Marussia is progressing! They’ve been genuinely challenging the Sauber and Lotus where their engine won’t hamper them too much, and with probably more than a third less budget than Caterham.

  2. Caterham needs to go. Like right now.

  3. What a mess

  4. This really seems like the best possible outcome for now.

    Despite what Kolles and Engavest had said in earlier statements about them being faultless, If the administrator had the ability to shut-down the factory and prevent them from racing in the U.S unless a timely agreement was reached, they obviously had some clout and I’m very glad to hear about this agreement just to (hopefully?) keep things going in the mean time.

    To be honest I don’t find the situation as messy or ugly as it’s made out to be. There have been some rather unprofessional actions particularly from the side of Engavest, however there still may be cause for them. Obviously their attempts to separate 1Malaysia Racing Team from Caterham Sports haven’t held up in the short term. But it will be interesting to see if the threatened litigation towards Fernandes yields any change in fortunes for them.

    I’m hoping through administration a very cheap price can be bargained for someone looking for an entry.
    Brawn GP 2.0 – “doing it from scratch this time”

    One can dream…

    1. Maybe Haas might buy up some of the parts so they’ve got a chassis to develop next year while they get the rest in place for 2016.

    2. @skipgamer – Not knowing enough about the Caterham team structure to know who would be advising the administrators on racing decisions I wonder how those decisions would be made. Also, concerning available funds, how could the administrators approve going racing if there are no funds?

      I hope there is a way for Caterham to finish the season, it just doesn’t seem too hopeful.

  5. another great job by Colles ^^

    1. @marussi I don’t think one person can be blamed for the company’s downfall after only three months. I think this was going to happen regardless of who was in control and Tony F. jumped off this burning ship before it capsized.

      1. Plus Kolles managed to keep HRT running for a long time until the owners took it over and couldn’t cope with the stress.

  6. In 2010 three new teams – HRT and the now Caterham and Marrusia – were allowed to enter the series at expense of companies like Prodrive. Now we see the consequences.

    1. Well said.

      I wonder whether some of the other teams – those with vetoes over the rules – didn’t like the idea of proper outfits like Prodrive coming in and beating them?

    2. The problem with Prodrive was that there entry was reliant on customer cars been allowed. When it became clear customer cars were not going to be part of the regulations the Prodrive entry became useless.

      HRT, Caterham & Marussia all submitted entry’s with facilities & car designs included, Hence they got the entry’s for 2010.

      It should also always be remembered that when all 3 teams submitted there entry’s & got approval from FIA/FOM they were entering under a budget cap & there financial structures were setup under the belief that there would be a cap. It was only after the budget cap was dropped that the 3 of them started to hit trouble as they found out there were going to have to spend a lot more than originally expected.
      And as Tony Fernandes said a dozen times, They have been promised cost cuts over & over again yet each time those cuts get blocked so the F1 they were told they were entering never materialized & the costs they were told would be going down have just gone up.

      1. I am not sure if you are mixing up their 2010 bid with them being allocated a position on the grid for 2008, which they later had to turn down.
        In that case, their place for the 2008 season did depend on customer cars being allowed (customer McLaren’s in that instance), but Williams began legal proceedings against both Prodrive and the FIA in order to have that plan dropped.

        For 2010, Prodrive did initially launch a bid, but there is an indication that Richards withdrew the bid when the opportunity to purchase Renault came up. However, in that instance we know that Genii Capital were the successful bidders, and after that Richards seems to have abandoned plans for Prodrive to enter F1.

        To a certain extent though, there is a question over how well Prodrive might have done as an independent manufacturer in F1.

        Prodrive didn’t exactly have a great record in the LMP1 field when they entered sportscar racing – they alienated Lola Cars over complaints that Prodrive were claiming the credit for developments actually produced by Lola, whilst Prodrive’s efforts to produce their own car yielded the AMR-One, a car so badly underdeveloped that Dr Ullrich publicly branded Prodrive as incompetent.
        That was a view that was backed up by Pescarolo, who reused the AMR-One’s chassis but dumped the rest of the car because everything else about it was “utter rubbish” – hardly a ringing endorsement of Prodrive’s technical abilities.

  7. I don’t even want to think what the level of motivation will be like in the Caterham garage in the last three races.

  8. I was wondering what impact this would have on the GP2 team, but I’ve just read that they (the EQ8 Caterham Racing) have been acquired by Status Grand Prix who intend to race under the Caterham name at Yas Marina and then under their own name next season.

    1. yes, that was announced earlier this week @timothykatz.

  9. Liam Radford (@)
    24th October 2014, 17:32

    Y’know, I find this sad. From 2010 Caterham were the strongest of the new teams and were considered the most likely to score points. But since 2013, they hit a downfall and Marussia took all the glory.

  10. Well, it at least looks like someone is doing a lot of work to try and get a somewhat happy ending out of this, the team has been given Dispensation by Bernie to miss the next two races.

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