“Show me the money!” Five F1 entries that went nowhere

It’s a cliche, but no less true for being oft repeated, that the fastest way to make a small fortune in motor racing is to start off with a large one.

Alongside the massed ranks of those who have lost great pots of money in the service of their motor racing dreams there is another class of entrant – those who believe that they can make it big while investing very little of their own money.

This week Autosport received an email announcing the putative return of the Caterham name to the Formula 1 grid.

“We are announcing that Saad Kassis-Mohamed Capital plans to return a dormant F1 entrant to the grid under a new entry, SKM Racing, targeting 2027, subject to FIA approval and agreement with the commercial rights holder,” said the email. Given the sturm und drang surrounding Cadillac’s bid to field an F1 entry, experience suggests the latter two prerequisites will not be forthcoming.

Saad Kassis-Mohamed, the Kuwaiti “entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist” fronting the project, most recently emerged as a potential buyer of the troubled English League One football club Reading. The investment did not go ahead.

There are many reasons not to give credence to announcements of new teams. Here are just a few of them.

LKY SUNZ (2021/2023)

Benjamin Durand’s on again, off again journey through the margins of F1 began in 2019 when he announced the formation of Panthera Team Asia. Durand, who had most recently managed the SMP Racing LMP2 squad in the World Endurance Championship, claimed to be targeting an entry “following the Haas model” (ie using as many bought-in components from other team and suppliers as possible under the rules).

The pitch was that while F1 had been chasing expansion in the USA following the acquisition of the commercial rights by Liberty Media, it had done nothing to grow the audience base in Asia. In itself this wasn’t an original concept: Panthera co-director Michael Orts was a director of Bronze Fortune Ltd, registered in the UK at the same address as Panthera, which had been the source of much excitement in the summer of 2017 when it was briefly renamed China F1 Team Racing.

But for all the talk of hiring personnel and operating from premises at Silverstone with a view to securing an entry in 2021, Panthera never got as far as lodging an entry. Ross Brawn, then the managing director of F1, said no new entrants would be considered until 2022 at the earliest: “We must learn from history, so many small teams came and went, and didn’t really add to F1.”

Durand briefly reappeared in 2020, insisting that he still had personnel working on preliminary designs and the basis of a deal for an engine supply, but “we are waiting to see what happens with F1 before we say more”.

Nothing more was heard of the project until 2023, when it was revived and subsequently rebranded as LKY SUNZ (pronounced ‘lucky suns’ in reference to the sun being revered in many Asian cultures) following the FIA’s decision to launch a tender process for a new team. Now the plan was to have an operational base in Asia, be “youth culture-focused”, and to have a strong emphasis on community outreach.

Despite claims of a $1bn budget, backing from the US-based Legends Sports Advocates Group, and a stated willingness to pay $600m into the anti-dilution fund (triple the rate at the time), the bid was rejected. It’s understood that the lack of granular technical and financial detail in the bid, along with the outfit’s lack of actual sporting pedigree, counted against it.

The company was dissolved in December 2023.

Zoran Stefanovic, with a 2009 Toyota TF109

Photo by: Sutton Images

Stefan GP (2010/2019)

Perhaps one of the reasons for F1 managing director Ross Brawn’s decision to slam the door on new entrants at the end of the last decade was his meeting with Serbian businessman Zoran Stefanovic during the weekend of the 2017 Austrian GP.

There, Stefanovic announced his intention to set up an F1 team based in Italy.

“Before coming to Austria I’ve put together some very important agreements,” he told Autosport. “I defined that it will be based in Parma, which is located a reasonable distance from the wind tunnel.

“I’ve also signed a contract with a specialist in aerodynamics to help work on the project.”

The specialist in question was said to be Enrique Scalabroni, an engineer with a substantial pedigree and fingerprints on the likes of the Williams FW11 and Ferrari 640.

Many sequels essentially follow the plot of the original book or movie, and Stefanovic’s pitch came freighted with deja vu. He was among the unsuccessful bidders for a place on the 2010 grid when Max Mosley announced three spots would be available to new entrants in the wake of the global financial crisis.

Despite this rejection, Stefanovic acquired some of the assets of Toyota’s canned F1 project and pushed ahead with plans to run a programme from Toyota’s Cologne base, with development superintended by former Arrows and McLaren designer Mike Coughlan. You may remember that name – he’s the fellow who sent his wife to the Woking branch of Prontaprint to run off copies of confidential Ferrari blueprints in the summer of 2007.

In February 2010 Stefanovic conducted a borderline surreal telephone interview with Autosport in which he claimed to be in talks with Jacques Villeneuve to drive, that Kazuki Nakajima had been signed already, and that the Stefan 01 car had been “fired up for the first time” in the race bays in Cologne. On other important matters, such as whether he would have an entry, or indeed any tyres, he was rather more vague.

“What we have at the moment is an answer from Bridgestone that they are only supplying to teams which are participating in Formula 1,” he said. “But we are positive that they may supply GP2 tyres.”

Little wonder, then, that nothing materialised from this project and Stefanovic’s return to the paddock in 2017 was greeted with much eye-rolling.

US F1 (2010)

Faced with the prospect of a manufacturer exodus from F1 as the global financial crisis gripped the car industry in the autumn and winter of 2008, FIA president Max Mosley announced various tender processes including a homologated low-budget powertrain, and new positions on the grid. The identity of the winning bids, announced during the Le Mans weekend in 2009, caused much consternation.

Manor Racing and Campos Grand Prix had racing pedigree in the junior formulae, but how had US F1 – led by former Haas technical director Ken Anderson along with Peter Windsor, the journalist and sometime Williams team manager – beaten bids from the likes of Prodrive and Lola?

As ever with Mosley, politics were never far away. He and F1 ‘ringmaster’ Bernie Ecclestone were locked in a battle with the eight entrants who formed the Formula One Teams Association, which planned to stage its own breakaway series.

US F1 supposedly enjoyed backing of YouTube founder Chad Hurley and promised to throw its doors open as never before in F1, with videos documenting every aspect of the team’s progress towards the grid. It did not want for facilities, since it was based in Charlotte, North Carolina – America’s ‘Motorsport Valley’.

Within months, rumours began to swirl that the project was considerably behind schedule – an impression bolstered by the absence of the promised videos. GP Racing magazine was invited to Charlotte in late summer and the journalist returned bemused, saying there was very little to photograph to illustrate the proposed article, and that Anderson appeared borderline unhinged, disappearing off to Starbucks with peculiar regularity.

Despite the rumours, the team announced Renault test driver Jose Maria Lopez, who brought a reputed $8m in sponsorship from Argentinean sources, as one of its pilots for 2010.

In February 2010, weeks away from the start of the season, Autosport published an interview with a team insider who wished to remain anonymous. The revelations were extraordinary, pointing to a fundamental breakdown of the development process – to the extent that the car was nowhere near finished, and there was no sponsorship.

Bob Varsha hosts the USF1 Press Conference with Ken Anderson and Peter Windsor

Photo by: Nigel Kinrade / NKP / Motorsport Images

Anderson, they claimed, insisted on every aspect of the design crossing his desk, creating a substantial bottleneck.

“There has been precious little in the way of formal planning and documentation,” the insider said. “No production schedules, simply very little in the way of planning.”

Upon reading this, Ecclestone dispatched a racing driver he knew well – now a respected broadcaster – to visit the factory. He reported back having witnessed little more than a ‘tub’, some fantasies, and a stack of Starbuck receipts.

Ecclestone swiftly alerted new FIA president Jean Todt, who sent race director Charlie Whiting – formerly chief mechanic at Brabham – to inspect the facilities. He inevitably reached the conclusion that US F1 was going nowhere.

It was a case of too little, too latte.

Two weeks before the season opener in Bahrain, having been absent from testing, the team claimed it had applied to the FIA to defer its entry to 2011. And then it vanished into the ether, Lopez’s $8m now spent, and nothing to see on YouTube beyond some amusing amateur skits satirising the whole farrago.

Russell King

Photo by: Sutton Images via Getty Images

Team Dubai F1 (2006)

In October 2004 an enterprise calling itself ‘Team Dubai F1’ announced plans to enter F1 in 2006 with Mercedes engines and technical support from McLaren, at a cost of $100m per season. The team itself would be based in Dubai.

Tremendous scepticism greeted this proposal from the off, given the various personalities involved and the circumstances of the time. While it appeared to have at least some support from the ruling Al Maktoum dynasty – team ‘representative’ Timothy Fulton also acted as a spokesperson for the Al Maktoums – the fact was that at least three F1 teams were known to be up for sale. Why not buy one of those.

“We ultimately concluded that the acquisition of an existing team would never enable us fully to demonstrate our own commitment and excellence since success would inevitably have been linked with the existing team’s brand and values,” Fulton was quoted in the team statement.

But it was the supporting cast who provided the greatest reasons for cynicism. The press release was sent by an outfit calling itself the Belgravia Group, claimed to be advising Grand Prix Investments, the body behind the proposed team. These two entities not only shared a registered address, they had much the same personnel: John Byfield and Russell King.

At the time, these individuals were merely considered to be the clowns who had mismanaged Jenson Button’s affairs to the extent that he ended up in court with his own team. BAR team boss David Richards went to Bernie Ecclestone to have King’s pass revoked.

Byfield would later go to great lengths to distance himself from King, and with good reason. King, whose corpulent frame, ostentatious dress sense, and the affectation of carrying a cane drew much comment in the F1 paddock, already had one conviction for fraud under his XXXL belt and more was to come.

Despite claims of having $48m to hand in order to lodge the necessary entry bond with the FIA, nothing further was heard of Team Dubai F1. When King reappeared in 2009 as the prime mover behind Qadbak, the entity supposedly buying the BMW team, McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh was among the first to sound the alarm bells.

The football world failed to perform its ‘due dil’ and Qadbak got its hands on the struggling Notts County club for the nominal sum of £1. BMW-Sauber was spared the catastrophe which unfolded there.

In 2018, having been extradited to Jersey from Bahrain, where he had been living undercover, King was sentenced to six years in prison for fraud and larceny.

Gaston Mazzacane, Prost AP04

Photo by: Clive Rose / Getty Images

Phoenix/DART Grand Prix (2002)

For several years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, grand prix entry lists were so oversubscribed that the stragglers had to face off against one another in the unedifying process of prequalifying on Friday morning. The losers in this game were packing up their equipment long before the ‘proper’ action began.

Now imagine not being allowed into the circuit at all.

This was the fate of Phoenix Grand Prix, a wing-and-a-prayer outfit fronted by Charles Nickerson, a businessman who had raced TWR Jaguars with Tom Walkinshaw under the nom-de-wheel of ‘Chuck’ Nickerson in the early 1980s. Perhaps alerted to the opportunity via the Walkinshaw connection, Nickerson acquired some of the assets of the defunct Prost team in late 2001 via his company, Phoenix Finance Ltd.

Crucially missing from the pile of components which were then transferred to the Leafield base of Walkinshaw’s Arrows team was any paperwork pertaining to Prost’s F1 entry.

Phoenix had the Prost APO4 cars and the intellectual property rights to them, but pretty much nothing else. When its skeleton crew turned up at the second round of the 2002 season, Malaysia, it was therefore denied entry to the paddock. For the season opener it had submitted a pair of nose cones to the scrutineers since the ex-Prost cars had yet to arrive at the factory.

So, as far as the FIA was concerned, it was a new team and had to lodge the necessary entry bond; Nickerson insisted that it was a continuation of the Prost team.

Although Walkinshaw publicly distanced himself from the enterprise, it was a thin pretence since the cars were known to have been prepared at Leafield and the Phoenix crew were drawn from the Arrows test team. Also, in the absence of the Acer-branded Ferrari engine which had powered the AP04s, the Phoenix ‘AP04Bs’ essentially had the gearboxes, suspension and TWR-badged Hart V10 engines from the Arrows AX3 three-seater demonstration car shoehorned in.

Another Walkinshaw hallmark was the belief that the team’s entry could be kept ‘live’ by simply tootling around the track for a few laps – a tactic he attempted just a few races later as Arrows itself ran out of money.

Still, being locked out of Sepang prevented Gaston Mazzacane and Tomas Enge from having to drive what would likely have been a deathtrap.

A peculiar change of name to DART Grand Prix while the shenanigans ensued only added to the tapestry of confusion and chaos.

Nickerson took the FIA and FOM all the way to the High Court but, in May, Sir Andrew Morritt – vice-chancellor of the Supreme Court – threw out the case and ordered Phoenix, DART, or whatever it happened to be called that day, to pay all costs.