All rights and copyright reserved to the Caterham F1 Team, Glenn Dunbar and LAT Photography ©
In the latest chapter of the Caterham saga, the running of the F1 team has been handed over to administrators has been confirmed this afternoon.
Although the Engavest consortium purchased the Caterham F1 team earlier this season, they claim previous owner Tony Fernandes had not fulfilled his part of the deal by handing over the shares.
However, Fernandes countered that by saying Engavest are the ones in the wrong and have not paid the team’s creditors.
Their dispute resulted in Caterham Sports Limited (CSL), who make and service the F1 cars for entry holder 1Malaysia Racing Team (1MRT), going into administration.
With the doors to the team’s Leafield factory locked, the cars inside and the United States GP looming, talks about the team’s future have been ongoing.
This led to Friday’s announcement that the management of the team had been handed over to administrator Smith & Williamson. Finbarr O’Connell, a representative of Smith & Williamson, issued the following statement this afternoon in the hope that the F1 team would remain viable and continue to race. The statement is as follows:-
‘Following a request of yesterday evening at 21.55hrs CET from Caterham Sports Limited’s administrators and the legal advisors of Mr Tony Fernandes’ related EXIM Bank, representatives of 1MRT/Caterham F1 Team have agreed, with all rights reserved, to hand-over management of the Caterham F1 Team to the administrator Mr Finbarr O’Connell in the higher interest of allowing the team to continue operating and preparing for the next events.’
At the moment, the situation in regards to the ownership of the Caterham F1 Team is just a difficult and complex situation that they do not need right now. With the situation firmly under the spotlight, questions are being raised as to why this situation was not dealt with using the correct and proper channels when the team acquired new ownership and also why the new ownership was officially announced if they knew the situation behind the scenes wasn’t fully closed legally.
But even though questions are being raised, it is clear that there is more to the situation than we realise and the team, the new and ex owners alongside other parties who are affected by the situation need to use the correct legal channels and sort this out as quickly as possible and get back to racing once again. And with this latest news, I do not see Caterham at Austin next weekend racing and that is very sad for Formula One.
But I fear that this is only the beginning and more light on the situation will be made avaliable as time goes on and I truly feel sorry for everybody who works for the team who could lose their livelihoods depending on how the matter is resolved using legal teams.
And I firmly believe that time is now running out for the Caterham team and they will have to swiftly act if they want to stay racing in Formula One. And that has to be their objective without a shadow of a doubt.
