F1 Fanatic

Are we sure about that? The Autosport article makes it sound like this is a fairly serious effort. For one, they’ve been in contact with Bernie, and he seems to think that if they acquire HRT’s assets, they will be allowed onto the grid. I don’t recall either Phoenix or Stefan doing that, much less getting Bernie’s approval.

We are 45 days until the first race and a week before testing and we don’t know the drivers, the teams, the calendar.

If the Scorpion Racing bid is legitimate, then I’d say the only way they stand a chance of making the grid in Australia is to have all of their duck lined up in a row. They would just need the FIA’s approval, and the floodgates would open.

@npf1 – I seem to recall it being speculated that Phoenix was an attempt by Tom Walkinshaw to acquire Prost Grand Prix and then absorb their assets into Arrows, which was really struggling at the time.

And for all their talk, nobody really seems to know what Stefan Grand Prix was; they claimed to be owned by a Serbian aerospace contractor, ACMO, but that was later found to be a shell corporation with just five hundred euros as its only asset. They claimed that they had sent a shipping container off to Bahrain so that they could be ready at a moment’s notice, but I remember hearing that it was just filled with plastic furniture.

Yes, they did turn up in Malaysia. And they were refused entry to the grid. It was ten years ago, so I can’t remember the exact circumstances surrounding it, but the FIA did shut them down pretty fast.