HRT – replacing Minardi as the eternal backmarkers under new owners?
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So HRT is still trundling on. They have a horribly underdeveloped car, the worst name to think up in decades and are broke. Instead of getting Toyota to develop a mean machine for next year and racing a decent Austrian (Klein), cashing in on the Senna name, having PR-Crack Karun Chandhok work towards their image in India and the whole of Asia, they have only Yamamoto paying enough bills to get along with their soapbox Dallara (and even that only hardly, if Singapore is one to go by).
So where could it go from here?
Would Cypher want to buy them, or a broke Stephan GP? Or will they secure some money and agree with Epsilon Euskadi’s Villedeprat to use his development to get a half decent car to the grid?
As this is Formula 1, I think it might be GP2 dropout Durango snapping up the team with F1s faded star Jaques Villeneuve, who will have to consede to a managing and figure head role after testing.
So they might sign Pedro (who might beat Quickish Nick to it by a few pennies) to drive alongside Moldanado in a new permanent underdog. Their car? It might be from Toyota (with Venezuelan and Sudan oil paying for it) or maybe Dallara again?
It might just get some nice characters on the grid, wiht JV himself, Ghadaffi’s son and possibly Chavez showing up (he might invite the Castro brothers as well), to find this team their niche in the play of things.
Are they broke? They seem to be surving although maybe just. There’s an interview with Kolles in F1 racing and he’s adamant they’ll be here next year and that it’s all about balance which he feels he’s good at but that they really, really need sponsors.
He didn’t deny the Toyota rumours as such. Well, he didn’t say no about Toyota so those of us with activate imaginations and a lot of hope for the team can still day dream!
He also doesn’t sound too confident about FI now certain people have left but that’s a whole other issue!
I’m not sure if they’ll be bought if I’m honest. They’ve been such a mess this year. If I was JV I’d go for something that looked a better prospect. I hope they really do surive for next yera though!
Personally I don’t want to see JV back in F1 – neither as a driver, nor as a team owner. His results in the end of his F1 career were not very convincing and it’s hard to believe that he has got any better since then (just look at Schumacher or de la Rosa). He was ready to step into the strange Stefan GP project, which has never seemed a serious project for me. Moreover, his ‘expert’ column in F1 Racing seems to lack F1 competence.
However, I hope that HRT survives. There is nothing bad about being backmarkers. Minardi stayed in F1 for much longer than BMW or Toyota. Guys like Kolin Colles or Giancarlo Minardi really love racing, while the big manufacturers sometimes treat sport as a business project. F1 needs backmarkers. I have no idea where HRT could get the funding from but a new ‘Minardi’ with one pay driver and one talented guy on the grid seems a good idea to me.
” Moreover, his ‘expert’ column in F1 Racing seems to lack F1 competence.”
Despite never being a fan of JV I actually really like his column.
I think JV was perhaps better than I gave him credit for as a racer. He did get the title and was great in 96 but the BAR decision just went horribly wrong. I think he always had talent but him coming back as a racer would be seriously hard as Girts points out, look at Schumi and dlr. I don’t think a driver can run a team and drive so he’d have to give up one or the other and I don’t see him in a HRT or running it.
Kolles is doing a good job in my opinion so if the team does get sold they should hang on to him.
If HRT have any sense, they would have put almost all their resources in to building a car for next year. It was clear from the start they would be struggling to match Virgin and Lotus for speed in most races.
I hope they have decent funding next year and do a stella job of it. Bruno deserves a car worthy of his talent.
Instead of getting Toyota to develop a mean machine for next year and racing a decent Austrian (Klein), cashing in on the Senna name, having PR-Crack Karun Chandhok work towards their image in India and the whole of Asia, they have only Yamamoto paying enough bills to get along with their soapbox Dallara
Having Toyota develop the car and running Klien alongside Senna would have been nice … but since they don’t have any money, it was pretty much impossible to achieve from the very beginning.
Would Cypher want to buy them, or a broke Stephan GP?
No and no. Those teams were unable to secure budgets for 2011, so why would they suddenly have the money to buy HRT?
Or will they secure some money and agree with Epsilon Euskadi’s Villedeprat to use his development to get a half decent car to the grid?
That offer was never made. The only reason why Epsilon’s name was ever mentioned in conjunction with HRT is because they’re both Spanish.
As this is Formula 1, I think it might be GP2 dropout Durango snapping up the team with F1s faded star Jaques Villeneuve, who will have to consede to a managing and figure head role after testing.
Villenueve has ruled out buying HRT. They’re looking at Toro Rosso and are believed to have made an offer for the team, but they’ve recently admitted it’s more likely they will transfer their assets over to NASCAR.
So they might sign Pedro (who might beat Quickish Nick to it by a few pennies) to drive alongside Moldanado in a new permanent underdog. Their car? It might be from Toyota (with Venezuelan and Sudan oil paying for it) or maybe Dallara again?
Maldonado has been mentioned in conjunction with Williams, and rumours that he will replace Hulkenberg – and bring fifteen million Euros in sponsorship from PDVSA – are gaining momentum. And even if Maldonado did go to HRT, there is no way two oil companies would sponsor the same team (and Tamoil is Libyan, not Sudanese). Toyota won’t build the car because the people involved will have moved on to other projects by now, and it’s unlikely Dallara will want to work with the team again after they very nearly didn’t get paid for this year’s car.
It might just get some nice characters on the grid, wiht JV himself, Ghadaffi’s son and possibly Chavez showing up (he might invite the Castro brothers as well), to find this team their niche in the play of things.
Ghadaffi isn’t actually that bad anymore. In fact, he’s fairly harmless. He agreed to end his chemical and biological weapons programs voluntarily and has since disamed. And Ghadaffi Jnr. wasn’t really that close to his father, at least not in the way Saddaam Hussein’s family were. Nor is Chavez that bad. He’s outspoken, but not aggressive like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Even then, Chavez and Ahamdinejad don’t hate all Westerners – they just don’t trust western governments. You can be an American citizen, go to Iran or Venezuela and make no secret of who you are and you won’t get hassled (so long as you stay out of politics, or in the case of Iran, you do not visit Israel first because you will be denied entry).
The Israel situation alone is why I have 0% respect for Ahmadinejad. But I sense this thread is beginning to stray away from F1…
Ahmadinejad is just … well, mad, really. He’s supposed to represent the people, but I gather that he simply presents his opinions as the opinion of the people. Which is a shame because this – http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4114427 – shows that an Iranian Grand Prix has potential. But with Ahmadinejad leading the way, it would never happen.
moving swiftly back on topic…
HRT will never be the minardi team. They have no team spirit and just seem completely incompetent. Minardi were, in my mind, just a little bad for most of their career. Same kind of level that Lotus have been this year. Nothing like HRT.
I personally feel quite strongly that they should not be on the grid. Especially with the Toyota car available to them which they didnt take. Wouldn’t be surprised if they aren’t here next year
They didn’t take the Toyota because they were already committed to Dallara – and Stefan GP had a deal with Toyota at the time.
I’ve never really understood the anti-HRT sentiment. I’m a fan (although I feel guilty as I love Virgin) as to be they are a proper underdog team.
Campos left the team in such a state and Kolles pretty mcuh swooped in and saved them at the last hour. Despite thw choas they somehow made it to Bahrain and have survived this season almost.
There was an interview with Kolles in F1 Racing and he says the team always comes first. That sounds like team spirit to me.
I think one of their problems is they gave Karun the boot and keep taking on pay drivers. Kolles insisted that Yamamoto didn’t drive for money but even if he did it was for the survival of the team. Pay drivers aren’t new or a HRT problem it’s just the brutal culture of F1. If Yamamoto didn’t give them the money then they could have gone under and Karun would have been left without a drive anyway. Team first driver second. I like Karun and I think he’s a really intelligent racer but he didn’t seem that fast. He was top of the newbies mostly through reliability. Kolles also says he booted out Senna for one race because he wasn’t delivering as expected and after that weekend out he did so maybe that was a smart move. The only bad thing was that email rumour…
They don’t have the best PR in the world either but they do have some people on Twitter who are very friendly although nothing like Virgin who are tremendous with their fans. They also have barely had even an ounce of coverage on the BBC. On the forum they’ve been in Virgin’s motorhome and they’re having a full-blown lvoe affair with Lotus (good on Lotus for using it though) but it’s like HRT have been forgotten.
Kolles admits so far his team and the other newbies have brought nothing to the sport. He’s honest, he doesn’t try to talk up hsis team or make justifications. He’s just working hard to make sure they do something worthwhile in the future.
I think the biggest problem for them is that GP2 undermines them. I don’t think they’ve ever been slower than a GP2 car but years ago there used to be F1 cars bang off the pace even more so than HRt but they were tolerated because it was really the only series. GP2 is meant to be the baby F1 and if HRT are barely up on their times it doesn’t do them any good.
PM’s answered they Toyota question :P
If they improve next year it’ll be terrific as right now they look stagnant but despite all the money trouble rumours they’re still here. It’s a success story for me so far because I honestly didn’t think they’d even make Bahrain and they are. Next year they have to improve though for me.
HRT has its place in F1, if it wasn’t for them we would never know how fast the top teams actually are.
Yes, HRT will probably not be anywhere but the back of the grid, and in that way they are in a similar position to Minardi.
What Minardi did do (intentionally or not) was provide a stepping stone for future “Stars” of F1 – Webber and Alonso for instance.
I love HRT, not for anything impressive, but they’re pretty plucky. They’ve been to every race, even when they’re barely tested their car and were almost assembling an AirFix model in the garage first race in.
But I have 3 main feelings about this :
1) HRT have only had one season, you can’t judge them on that alone, although the question is worth raising.
2) Minardi weren’t eternally at the back of the grid, they did sometimes qualify somewhere in the midfield. However, HRT do finish, and Minardi’s 1st year record is insanely covered in pink ‘RET’ boxes.
3) I think i’ll be impossible for another team to run for 20 years and be SOO bad at point scoring. 32 points in 21 years. They’ll either expel the proverbial, or get off the pot.
Nice to see the hearted discussion going on here. PM, i get it you know everything better (your right, Ghadaffi is Lybian not from Sudan), but i would like to get your view of what HRT will be up to in the winter and next year instead of just hearing all my speculations and thoughts turned down.
I really get to think of HuRT as the eternal backmarker, but i find it hard to see their future. They have no capacity for the design and manufacturing themselves (Epsilon Euskadi confirmed they would be interested in supplying that, if actually asked to do so, Toyota would, but want to be payed as well) and i fail to see any serious money coming in to pay for it.
While a lot of those (cypher, durango/jv, Epsilon Euskadi, ART, …) would like to buy a team, non seem to be in talks with the cheapest option, i suppose HRT just has to little to offer for them, as buying Torro Rosso, or whoever would be far more expensive.
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