Adrian Reynard

"Like most things there is not really one reason for Reynard Motorsport being placed in receivership. Certainly it has been a combination of factors. The company was successful up until 2000 really.

"But in 1999 I decided to step down as chief executive and I appointed Alex Hawkridge to run the company. A floatation on the new New York Stock Exchange was attempted, which was unsuccessful for various reasons. But the company had spent a lot of money on restructuring to prepare to go public. I had run the company as a bunch of satellites and Alex chose to pull them all together in one group and we created an American holding company on top of it. The company got quite a lot bigger. We spent a lot of money on professional fees.

"When it didn't float, it was the first burn of quite a lot of money. It probably cost us up to £2 million. But probably even worse was that we had entered into a binding contract to buy US racing car constructor Riley & Scott, which was a deal we had to carry on with. Because there were no proceeds from the float, we had to borrow the money to acquire the company. Having run a company without debts for 25 or 26 years, suddenly we had a lot of debt. R&S cost us $10.4 million and we had to borrow the money to buy it. Then of course because we still didn't float, we hadn't got the resources to make the company work properly.

"The first car it produced was a R&S Indy Racing League car which was not up to standard. Eventually a year or so later, we decided to sell that company at a massive loss. All that investment, plus the loss on the IRL project, was a big financial burden for us which we were never able to service or shake off.

"In the same era it was decided Reynard should go into sportscars, so we spent another massive amount. That also was not properly engineered in the true Reynard tradition. We had to re-do it. A Reynard did eventually win its class at Le Mans last year, but at great expense - so there was another burn of resources.

"In the meantime, the CART car and the Formula Nippon car both continued to do reasonably well, although you could argue that Lola were catching up with us in Champ Cars.

"Anyway, I asked Alex to leave some time in 2000 and Mark Smithson took over as managing director. He was very motivated by sportscars aswell, and continued to pile the fuel on. We actioned a brand new car, the 02S, which was another big investment. He believed that sportscars had a big future, but unfortunately we weren't able to sell even one of them. We are here today not having sold one car.

"During the process, CART as a series hit problems. With the uncertainty over the future, sponsorship spiralled down, and that, combined with the good cars produced by Lola, meant that we had lost our price differentiator. When Rick Gorne came on board in May/June last year, he went out to the market place and found that he wasn't able to sell cars at a profit anymore. Because the market was shrinking the profit margins not just shrunk but disappeared and went negative.

"From later in the year, we looked at our numbers and realised we were going to make a loss on CART for the first time ever. We obviously realised at that stage that we needed investment urgently, and Rick being a good salesman, was sent out on that front as well. We thought we were making some progress until September when the whole world went on its head. By this stage we hadn't got one deposit for a CART car and by October/November, we realised that the CART market was probably never going to be the same again. Rick got very disheartened and I guess in his own mind he thought that it was just too difficult for him to do what he needed to do. So he left. This is all amicable stuff, whatever the press has said in the past. Rick and I still talk to each other. Our friendship is strained, but there was never any animosity whatsoever.

"So I had to take over the company because there was no one else left. Rick had come in as CEO with a view to do an management buy-out which I was supporting.

"Shortly after Rick departed, PacWest decided to switch to Lola after they had ordered five cars from us and that was a massive blow. Unfortunately they didn't tell us until the first car was built and the other four were in the process of being manufacturered and all the parts ordered. That was another big contributing factor.

"So from January I was trying to find an investor to rescue the company. We had a few interested parties, but I suppose they looked at the world economy, motor racing in general, they looked at CART, at the rules uncertainty, the amount of debt we had. It was not an encouraging investment. The last prospective investor we had faded away just over a week ago. Then we were in a position where it was impossible to carry on, and the conclusion was that we went into receivership last Thursday."