It's been a slow week for F1 news. Other than the whole "Michael Parks His Car" fiasco, there's not been much going on of any real substance.

About the only interesting bit that's come out is that the Midland MF1 team might be sold. It appears that Lost Boys, the Dutch company that is one of MF1's sponsors, has made an $125 million offer to Alex Shnaider. That's about four times what he reportedly paid for Jordan in 2004. A nice little profit for him, and a deeper set of pockets for the team.

Shnaider has discovered what other privateers before him knew: it costs a LOT of money just to run a F1 team. To run a competitive team takes a lot MORE money on top of that, and Midland just can't afford to fork it out for no gain. It's not like a steel company would get much in the way of advertising benefit from an F1 sponsorship, yet that's essentially what Midland did when they acquired the team.

Car manufacturers like Renault, Honda, Toyota, BMW and Mercedes, it's obvious what the attraction is, however, which is why we've entered a period of factory teams. A side effect of that is the loss of players like Guido Minardi, Eddie Jordan, and other privateer teams.

Weird to think of a steel company as being a privateer, but there you are.

Posted by: Wonderduck at 06:38 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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