F1 Fanatic

With Brazil emerging as a world financial power and with their love of F1 and the number of drivers they have, is anyone surprised that there is no F1 team from Brazil? How long before this happens?

There’s a German team that isn’t based in Germany.

There’s an Indian team that isn’t based in India.

There’s an Austrian team that isn’t based in Austria.

There’s a Russian team that isn’t based in Russia.

There’s a Malaysian team that isn’t based in Malaysia.

So there is no reason why the sport cannot have a team owned by Brazilians and competing under a Brazilian licence, but based somewhere much more practical. Of course, this requires investment from Brazil, and there clearly has been no public or corporate interest in doing so.

First we have to sort out our feeder series, recreate our single-seater series, invest in our decaying circuits and reset that stupid Brazilian Motorsport Confederation that did nothing but let our motorsport rot. Then we can think about having an F1 team.

Actually, I’ve heard that Carlos Slim isn’t really that interested in Formula 1. It’s his eldest son, also named Carlos, who is backing Mexico’s presence in Formula 1. Although Sergio Perez’s run of results this year would certainly be enough to justify an increased presence in the sport that the elder Slim would recognise. There’s been a lot of talk that one of the Slims would buy into Sauber for some time now, but they were also linked to a buyout of Honda at the end of 2008, so I don’t think there is anything more to this than a rumour that keeps getting recycled, with only the name of the team changing.

I suspect it is more likely that Roman Abraumovich will buy into Sauber, with Slim moving to become title sponsor of Ferrari if and when Sergio Perez gets himself promoted.

@keithcollantine what we have of single-seater series we have to thank for private investors, like Massa with his Formula Future. We used to have a big F3 scene, but it’s not nearly what it was years ago. There is simply no incentive or initiative from the CBA to help young drivers on an international scale, so if you don’t have money to move to Britain or Italy to race on the F3 Championships there, then you’re basically stuck here in Brazil with stock cars.

It looks to me like they hope to find the odd talent like Piquet, Senna, Barrichello and Massa (and maybe Razia and Nasr in the near future) instead of investing on the basics, and going like that I can see a long spell in F1 without a Brazilian F1 driver (nevermind an F1 team)