Force India “victim” of the bankruptcy of Caterham and Marussia

It is often easier to blame others rather than confront oneself. This seems to be the strategy adopted by Sahara Force India and its director, Bob Fernley.

He thus stated to the Press Association that the agreement with Toyota’s wind tunnel was delayed due to Caterham’s bankruptcy, which already had a contract with the Japanese manufacturer: « As you know, we recently started working with Toyota’s wind tunnel in Cologne. However, Toyota had an agreement with Caterham. Quite logically, they had to resolve their issues with Caterham before we could establish our contract. We only got the green light at the beginning of December. So we were behind schedule before we even started. »

It must be said that the issue of using a shared wind tunnel has been a subject of past friction between Sahara Force India and Caterham. In 2012, the Silverstone team was ordered to pay £650,000 to Mike Gascoyne and Caterham when the High Court in London found that Aerolab, a wind tunnel used by both teams, had taken a shortcut by using pre-existing files for the design dedicated to Caterham but that no systematic copying had been implemented to take advantage of the work done for Force India.

Moreover, the British leader believes that the bankruptcy of his two competitors also had negative repercussions for his team since some of their common suppliers demanded payment assurances due to their losses linked to the disappearance of their two clients: In addition, we had some problems with suppliers because they were strongly affected by the bankruptcy of Marussia and Caterham. They wanted to be paid in cash, which hurt us from a cash-flow perspective. I don’t blame the suppliers at all; I would have done exactly the same if my financial situation had been severely impacted. But it didn’t help us and forced us to slow down in certain areas.

Nevertheless, he insists on being reassuring by stating that these delays are only due to a simple cash flow issue and not a lack of budget to ensure developments throughout the entire season: « In the end, it’s just cash flow. It’s not as if the budget isn’t available, which is the same as every year. Normally, we can manage by working with suppliers, but this year, we couldn’t do it. So it slowed us down a bit. »

In this context, it is easier to understand why the team opposed Marussia’s request to race with a 2014 car: if the rescue project is not successful, a share of four million pounds will go to Sahara Force India. But, obviously, these two elements are not related in any way…

With the participation of www.Racingbusiness.fr