F1 links: Indian investors eye BMW

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The Indian government may not think F1 is a sport, but with Giancarlo Fisichella putting Force India on the podium and a group of Indian investors looking to take over the former BMW team, perhaps F1 is starting to take a foothold in the world’s second-largest country?

Indian consortium bids for Formula 1 team BMW

"Though the deal seems to be a fair one, it seems incredulous that Indian investors are willing to shell out that much money after continuously shying away from sponsoring Indian drivers like Narain Karthikeyan and Karun Chandhok. An Indian driver is a condition that most Indian investors would insist on and though Jani – who has been signed on by Leander Sports recently – has an Indian connection through his father, backing him seems a bit odd when you have talent in your country."

ING Renault F1 Team Statement 04.09.09

"The ING Renault F1 Team acknowledges the FIA’s request for representatives of the team to appear before the FIA World Motor Sport Council in Paris on the 21st of September 2009. Before attending the hearing, the team will not make any further comment. "

Massa suspicious of Piquet’s Singapore crash from the start

"As commentator for Brazil's 'TV Globo', Reginaldo Leme said, "He crashed in a very strange way. It struck me when I was talking recently with Felipe Massa. Felipe had gone to Briatore and said, 'This crash was not right, it happened because you wanted it to'."

Why F1 was too quick to dismiss KERS

"At the moment the speculation is that there will be a new powertrain in 2013, and there is a very firm intent to have a KERS type system in there. There are 42 months until the first race of 2013 – and that is not long in terms of development of systems."

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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8 comments on “F1 links: Indian investors eye BMW”

  1. At first i thought this news was a dud, but the same story was published inF1-Live.
    But there is no news regarding who was the bidder. Could it possibly be Tata Motors? They are after all the manufacturers of NANO,the cheapest car in the world, they also own the Jaguar & Land Rover brands . F1 would be the perfect platform for them to showcase their Brand. Wouldn’t it be nice to see the back of Jaguar?

  2. india is not the second largest country in the world, canada is.

    1. It is the second largest in terms of population.

  3. Prisoner Monkeys
    6th September 2009, 12:05

    One has to wonder whether they would have done this if Force India had not had their success in Belgium. I think it’s great that smaller independent teams can do so very much with so little cmopared to the bigger kids, but these investors have to recognise that it’s going to be an uphill battle. I honestly think the thirteenth grid position will go to Prodrive or Epsilon.

    1. Me too, Epsilon have seemed fairly bullish this week and have released statements expecting a positive result for them. The problem with the BMW deal is not the original outlay £65million (which has dropped recently) it’s the £100million they have to garauntee in investement to BMW, and then the commitment to F1 through concorde. But it is nice to see the competition for places, I hope though we don’t end up with teams so uncompetitive that they collapse mid-season.

      1. Prisoner Monkeys
        6th September 2009, 15:07

        The biggest problem for BMW will be convincing the FIA that they have a buyer. They couldn’t find one last time, and the suggestion is that the self-sabotaged so that whoever bought them out wouldn’t experience a Brawn-esque return to form and humiliate BMW. If that’s true, I don’t see what would have changed since.

        Depending upon how serious the story about the Malaysian government backing a Lotus effort is – details are vague, but I suspect they’ve either bought out or will be a serious backer of Litespeed given Mike Gascoyne’s involvement, I suspect that’s the case – then BMW are probably third or fourth at best.

        That said, I don’t think the teams will be collpasing mid-season. No-one wants a repeat of Jordan-Midland-Spyker-Force India, which has had four owners in five years (and if rumours of Mallya being in dire straits finanially are true, that may become five owners in six years). Epsilon and Prodrive both seem like pretty solid efforts, while BMW will no dbout eveluate all their prospective buyers pretty thoroughly.

        1. Also, have they even started building a 2010 car yet?

          If not every day that passes makes the team less valuable.

  4. I find it very odd that Indian investors want BMW when they could, for a much lower price, work with Mallya to keep Force India afloat. What’s up with that?

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