Asiatech Still Seeking Carmaker Partner

Formula One engine builders Asiatech, a secretive company with publicity-shy Asian backers, are designing their own car and hoping to team up with a manufacturer.

Currently supplying Minardi for free after a similar one-year deal with Arrows, Asiatech said at the weekend it was time to reveal some plans.

"Asiatech has been a mystery now for the two years that we have been on the circuit and we are finally talking," Japanese-born financial director John Gano said at the Nurburgring. "Our philosophy has always been to keep our mouths shut, keep our heads down, do the work.

"We have come to the point where, using the generous seed money that I was able to raise in Japan, we want to link with a road car manufacturer.

"The future of Formula One is road car companies," said Gano, whose company has spent some $150 million investing in their programme for a total reward to date of just three Championship points.

"We are talking to a couple of manufacturers now but we don't want anyone to feel like they've been left out. That's why we are sending the signal around. We don't want people to come to us and say 'Why didn't you contact us?'

"We want everyone to know: Don't miss your chance. The time to talk to us is now."

The task will not be easy, with most of the major manufacturers already well established in Formula One and Asiatech regularly occupying the tail-end slots on the grid with struggling Minardi.

There is also fierce competition among the smaller entrepreneurial teams, some of them under intense financial strain and also seen as possible Asiatech targets, to be associated with the remaining carmakers.

Full Car

Asiatech took over the former Peugeot Sport engine facilities in France after the manufacturer quit two years ago as well as a former Williams-owned touring car factory in Didcot, near Oxford.

Argentine Enrique Scalabroni, Asiatech's technical director, said 27 staff had been recruited from other teams to work in Didcot on the chassis. More than 300 work in France.

"We are now designing a complete Formula One car," said Scalabroni, who has worked with Williams and Ferrari.

The plan is to provide an 'off the shelf' package, with the chassis and engine fully integrated, that could be ready for racing as early as 2003 under a manufacturer's brand if a suitable partner emerged.

"We have prepared a very logical, high quality and tremendously low-priced package for a road car company that wants to come to Formula One," said Gano, who said some of his backing came from Japan's Sony family.

"We are talking about a partnership. The pattern is something more like (Mercedes engine partner) Ilmor. Our job is to prepare the platform which gives entry at a tenth of the cost that BMW or Toyota have invested."

Gano said Asiatech had spoken to other teams about next season and were also not worried about the risk of being left out in the cold.

"We have three teams that are begging us, on their knees, for our engine at the moment," he said. "If Minardi can find another one they will have to produce it from a handkerchief.

"We're not worried about being shut out of the sport. If we leave, it's to come back in a stronger package. But our temperament is to stay and fight."

Credibility Problem

"We feel that this year we have achieved one of our main objectives and we are preparing for the next step," Gano said.

"When we came to Formula One with our Asian-based money...Enrique and I wanted to start by constructing the chassis. But we spoke to (Formula One supremo) Bernie Ecclestone and he said 'Where's your engine?'."

Six months later they went back to Ecclestone as the owners of the Peugeot factory.

"Bernie said 'You've got a credibility problem with the former Prost-Peugeot engine. Stay out and test for a year.' We said 'No, we'll test in the circuit'."

Gano said Asiatech now had an engine that cost 30 percent less, had more power and good reliability.

"We already have an engine that is capable of winning races and podiums," he said, an eye-popping assertion in a season that has seen the utterly dominant Ferrari win seven out of nine races so far.

Williams and McLaren, backed by German car giants BMW and Mercedes, are the only other teams to have won since 1999 when Jordan and Stewart also triumphed.

"The next step is the chassis," said Gano. "We already have the design of a chassis that technically we could produce by January for racing in the 2003 season. And all this just 15 months into Formula One.

"We haven't been sleeping," he said. "We have a seven-year time frame to challenge for the Championship."