Hope this works for him: Prodrive boss David Richards is making a bid for his new Formula One team to become a McLaren 'B' operation. With the collapse of Direxiv's plans to link up with McLaren, Richards has been talking with McLaren about running customer chassis and Mercedes-Benz engines from 2008. Richards has made no secret of the fact that his new F1 team could have a better chance of success becoming a customer team, rather than trying to create everything from scratch. Carol
If there has, then I wouldn't like it. To me the main appeal of F1 is that everyone has to build their own cars from the ground up (minus the engine). Mark
^Agreed. Plus, what would McLaren do when Prodrive outdid them with their own equipment. I get the impression Ron Dennis would just implode. One second he'd be there, a moment later there'd be a black hole in the garage sucking wrenches and winglets into it. My $.02 is that Prodrive is the team to watch in the next couple years. They'll be teething as should be expected, but they plain old make things happen when given a chance.
When Sauber got the engine, transmission and suspension from the 2004 Ferrari a lot of people cried wolf. Ron Dennis defended them surprisingly. Now I realize why. He was thinking ahead... I remember back in 1980 there was a small B team using the 1979 Williams chassis. Desiree Wilson (yes a woman) was one of the drivers. Apparently back then it was ok to use somebody else's chassis. Well and this year Super Aguri used the last Arrows chassis. So I guess not much has changed.
The rule is "you can only buy a chassy from Ferrari" Seriously - rule is something like "team should have enough intellectual power to develop chassy themselves" that doesn't mean that have to develop it, it means they just need to look smart
i can't agree more. BAR was flying high when he was the boss. i can't imagine the look on their faces should Prodrive start outpacing and beating honda on a regular basis.
Don't forget Hector Rebaque prior to becoming a pay driver at Brahbam, he was buying a year old Lotus for his team.
