Minardi Unconcerned over Title Sponsor Loss

Minardi team chief Paul Stoddart said on Wednesday that the team remain financially sound despite the termination of a lucrative contract with title sponsors Wilux.

Minardi terminated their sponsorship deal with bathroom equipment manufacturer Wilux after "irreconcilable differences" which began before the British Grand Prix in July.

But Stoddart said: "It is just annoying, nothing more than that. It is not a case of long-term damage it is just an inconvenience. It is not going to put the team under financial pressure."

Wilux are understood to have failed to make good on their payments during the season but the company CEO was angered by Minardi's decision to run without sponsorship in memory of former sporting director John Walton at Silverstone.

Stoddart had met Wilux representatives on the Friday of the German Grand Prix weekend and agreed to continue the deal but it was called off after Wilux CEO Ruud Wildschut criticised Stoddart and the team's drivers.

"We don't really want to make anything of it," Stoddart told Atlas F1. "All I can say is a dispute arose from the decision by the team to withdraw the sponsors' logos at Silverstone.

"Although their representative was informed at the time we were not aware that the principal of Wilux was not happy and it was too late to change. But that was not the highest priority on my mind at the time.

Minardi run on one of the lowest budgets of the sport's ten teams but scored a point this season after Hungarian Zsolt Baumgartner finished eighth in the United States Grand Prix in June.