Virgin on the ridiculous
The soap opera that surrounds the ex-Honda Formula One team continues as the first Grand Prix of the season approaches. Several questions seem to just float in the air without any resolution. Will they, or won't they get there? Who will buy the team? Is the car any good after all?
Well one question has been answered. There is no buyer. Forget David Richards and forget Richard Branson's recent posturing about Virgin acquiring the team. Honda's president Takeo Fukui has gone on record to say that they have not found a buyer. According to the BBC website, the deadline for finding a new owner is this week.
Bernie Ecclestone, talking through the medium that is the News of the World, has said that he offered to help Nick Fry and Ross Brawn undertake a management buy-out. His help was refused and now Mr Ecclestone has positioned himself as the genial benefactor concerned only with doing the right thing, in order to make Fry and Brawn look ungrateful and misguided. However, the pair are not daft.
If they had allowed Ecclestone to help them in the buyout, this would have given him access to FOTA and their private meetings. Once there, he could set several cats among the pidgeons and rip their unity to shreds. In the short term, it means that the old Honda team looks increasingly doomed, yet for the long term Fry and Brawn may have helped saved the sport...
