F1 Team Caterham Sold!

Tony Fernandes and his partners have sold the F1 racing team, Caterham, to a group of Swiss and Middle Eastern investors. The team will no longer have ties with the Caterham Group but will maintain the name of company that focuses on automotive and motor racing technology. The Group's other endeavours include Caterham Cars, Caterham Racing (GP2), Caterham Moto Racing Team (Moto2), Caterham Bikes Caterham Composites and Caterham Technology & Innovation (CTI), overseen by CEO Graham Macdonald and shareholders, Fernandes and Kamarudin Meranun.  

Macdonald said, ‘Firstly, I want to thank everyone who was involved in the F1 team for all their hard work and dedication since the team’s first days in 2009. We have now secured an exciting new future for the F1 team with Dr Kolles that will allow the Caterham name to remain in Formula 1, giving us all the benefits of that exposure but also allowing us to focus our resources on new Caterham product development whilst leaving F1 to enter an exciting new chapter under the guidance of the new owners.’

Fernandes has always been a media darling since the rise of his budget airline, AirAsia, boosted by his social media following, but he deactivated his Twitter account on 28 June, not before posting a cryptic tweet amongst the last of his tweets: ‘F1 hasn’t worked’. At the start of this season, he said that this was the last chance for the team to prove its mettle: ‘…if we are at the back I don't think I'm going to carry on.’ Clearly, the team did not.

Caterham first entered F1 as Team Lotus in 2010, but was soon embroiled in legal dispute over the rights to use the Lotus name. After acquiring Caterham Cars, the team applied to change its name for the 2012 season. This season, the team watched its competitor Marussia, which also joined in 2010, score their first championship points at the 2014 Monaco Grand Prix. The other rival, HRT, folded in 2012.

Macdonald concluded, ‘The future for us now lies with all the exciting brands that make up Caterham Group. We will be looking to maximise the benefits of the F1 platform across all our brands, working closely with the new team owners, and our core focus is still on launching the brand new two-seat Caterham Car, a project we will be making more announcements about in due course.’

images: f1.imgci.com, tinypic.com