It's become clear that independent teams aren't in the future for Formula 1. Williams needs to be careful that he doesn't pull a Jordan and compromise the future of his team. There's an obvious double edge to all of this. Bigger companies bring bigger budgets and help push the sport forward. But since motor racing is a luxury, companies facing financial difficulty can no longer justify their 7 and 8-figure outlays and may need to pull the rug out, leaving a team without money. In that sense it's smart that Bernie has limited the field sizes, so there's usually someone to pick up the pieces of a failing team.
Boy, Stoddart and that reporter sure do have selective memories. Stoddart sold his team "because he saw the writing on the wall for the independent teams and got out before the party was over"???? Hmmm... I thought it had a little something to do with the team being virtually bankrupt, and Stoddart being unable to find any sponsors or being able to finance the team any longer. It reminds me of the Simpsons episode with George HW Bush, where his take on getting tossed out after 1 term in office as president was "after achieving all of my goals in only 4 years, it seemed a second term was unnecessary". Furthermore, I'm not sure that Frank Williams needs Paul Stoddart to "worry" for him. Williams has been doing quite well, financially. There was an article recently about the $$ in F1, and it pointed out that Williams was the best bang-for-the-buck in sponsorship $$ on the grid. You get the most exposure for the least $$ with Williams, compared to any other team. Williams has been very successful in attracting sponsorship, and have done quite well for themselves after BMW left them. Contrasted with Stoddart's constant whinging in the press and public airing of disputes with his sponsors, I highly doubt that he has any knowledge of the success of Williams' sponsorship campaign, so he ought to STFU with his "feel sorry for Frank Williams" comments. Frank is doing juuuust fine. And finally, the journalist is a mental midget if he thinks the reason ProDrive didn't enter F1 was because they "couldn't secure and engine and chassis deal". Total BS! Mosley opened up the WDC/WCC to a 12th team and got TONS of bidders. He was an utter hardass with the rules, only leaving the window open for a matter of days, and requiring huge amounts of $$$ to even have your proposal looked at ($45mm IIRC). Richards came up with the $$ and followed all Mosleys stupid rules, only to find out that the teams did in fact have veto power and Mosley didn't have quite the dictatorial rule he thought... and some teams (I may be misremembering but I think it was Ferrari) refused to go along with a new entry, which would have split TV revenues even further. As I recall, McLaren and Ron Dennis were chomping at the bit to have a 2nd team in the championship and were more than ready to supply Richards with a car and engine package, but Max didn't like that so it was killed. Of course it was OK when Ferrari did it with STR And Dave Richards got the shaft of a lifetime... after putting up tens of millions of dollars, being told he was *IN* for the 2008 season, making tentative deals to lease office and manufacturing space in England, and putting a team together, and just in general expending huge resources, he was told "Oops, sorry! Turns out Mosley shouldn't have promised you that after all... sorry old chap!".
