Rich Energy and Haas: The strangeness might not be over

There are those who subscribe to the belief that any publicity is good publicity, as well as its close cousin, Oscar Wilde's bon mot that there's only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

Didn't do Rich Energy any good, did it?

The company's hirsute (former) CEO William Storey specialised in a certain type of bombast from the off, unilaterally declaring the carbonated beverage "better than Red Bull". I'd have put that claim to the test if I could ever have got hold of a can of the stuff.

One of many storylines waiting to move on when Formula 1 reconvenes in the fickle Ardennes two weeks from now is the question of whether the Rich Energy branding will remain adorning the Haas cars or not.

Team principal Gunther Steiner wouldn't be drawn on what the outcome would be, saying, "It's still rumbling on, but we should have a decision in the next days - or by the beginning of the second half of the season, everyone will know.

"You will all see. If it's not on the car, it [the sponsorship deal] doesn't continue. If it is, it continues."

Perhaps Steiner can arrange a sponsorship deal with Schrodinger's cat, then...

The key now, after a dizzyingly bizarre summer of social media meltdowns and vast tranches of Companies House filings, is whether Rich Energy's shareholders have indeed taken control of the company and whether the money is in place to fulfil the obligations to Haas.

Steiner confirmed at the team's livery launch in the RAC Club at the beginning of the year that it had received the first installment, but a second payment of £6million was due this July - just before the fireworks went off.

Storey always poo-pooed those who had scrutinised Rich Energy's official filings and found little in the way of cash, saying that the money existed... elsewhere. But ultimately, whether your funds have passed through your accounts and are logged with Companies House, or are stashed in a suitcase under a toadstool on the Isle of Man, Formula 1 is a cash-hungry business that can't subsist for long on promises.

Psychologists have documented a particular cognitive bias known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, whereby certain low-performing individuals are unable to recognise their lack of ability - and, indeed, grossly overestimate their expertise. Donald Trump is frequently held up as a case study of the Dunning-Kruger effect in action, but the Rich Energy saga also bears many of the hallmarks.

Whether you enjoy its Taurine-tinged fizzy pop or not, one thing you must concede about Red Bull is that its marketing is slick and lavishly produced. The images and videos Rich Energy published on Twitter, typically seeking to demonstrate that - yes! - cans were on shelves in sundry retail emporia, had production values more in common with an episode of Rentaghost. Red Bull may or may not give you wings - but if you're going to take it on in the market you can't just, er, wing it.

Still, it caught the attention, though generally only that of the nattering nabobs of the internet. It appears, though, that the Rich Energy shareholders were also becoming a trifle discombobulated as time marched by and the claimed 90 million cans failed to appear on shelves.

On the eve of the British Grand Prix, the company's official Twitter account announced that it was unilaterally pulling the plug on its Haas sponsorship on account of the team's "poor performance". Haas responded with a statement from Rich Energy's shareholders attributing this to "the rogue actions of one individual" whom they were "in the process of legally removing from all executive responsibilities". Rich Energy's Twitter account fired back with a copy of a letter from the team's lawyers casting doubt on their ability to do this.

Autosport tracked down the shareholder named on the letter, who claimed that Storey had failed to join a scheduled conference call to discuss certain pressing issues - one of which was the impending July 11 deadline by which Rich Energy, Storey and his web designers had to pay £36,416 in costs as a result of losing a copyright case concerning the company logo. The timing of this, and the due-date for the second payment to Haas, coincided with the Tweet announcing the end of the Haas sponsorship.

When staging a coup, one of your first acts must be to cut off communications before you park your tanks on the lawn and remove the leader. This Rich Energy's investors palpably failed to achieve as Storey continued to tweet from the company account, in effect thumbing his nose at them and Haas from behind the ramparts. Amusing though this was, it was hardly edifying, redolent as it was of a pound-shop Brian Blessed mugging through a fringe production of Henry V.

Over the British Grand Prix weekend I spoke to a number of people in the F1 paddock with experience of the energy drink business, some more successful than others. Each pointed out that it's not the easy money some people believe it to be, principally because orchestrating the supply chain is challenging at the sort of scales required, especially if distribution arrangements aren't in place and demand is uncertain.

"And the end of the day," said one, "You're not going to make your fortune selling it on Amazon."

In recent months Rich Energy's shareholders had brought on board the former Sainsbury's boss Justin King, the sort of person who has the necessary contacts to get product on shelves. But it appears that the tensions behind the scenes between the shareholders and their eccentric CEO came to a head before that came to pass.

Over at Williams that pleasure will be soused with relief, for this was another team led an energetic dance at the tail end of last year. Autosport understands that at the US Grand Prix Claire Williams and CEO Mike O'Driscoll were ready to sign a title sponsorship deal, but at the appointed hour Rich's representative didn't arrive for the meeting. We also hear that talks with still another team had reached a point where its chief executive announced to staff at an 'all hands' meeting that title sponsorship was a done deal.

Having been left at the altar, Williams reached an arrangement with another ambitious start-up company: Rokit. This was also viewed with due scepticism by F1 insiders, and yet at the same time as Rich Energy was channelling the Jeremy Kyle Show in social media over the British Grand Prix weekend, Rokit was announcing a multi-year extension to its Williams deal and showing off functioning examples of its innovative 3D-screened Android handset.

Questions remain over the status of Rich Energy Ltd because one of Storey's final acts was to announce that he had sold the controlling share to the BDG Group, an organisation describing itself as "the UK's leading unlicenced insolvency practitioners". The new director changed the company name to Lightning Volt Ltd; Companies House records indicated a similar pattern of organisations coming under control of the BDG Group and undergoing a name change prior to liquidation.

And yet the Rich Energy Twitter account still tweets as if it's business as usual. The July madness has been deleted, and the tone is more corporate now.

Still, there are bills to pay, including that outstanding £6million to Haas. If the other shareholders have successfully wrested control over some aspect of the brand's operations, are they not now risking a demonstration of another cognitive bias - the sunk cost fallacy?

Given that the brand remains the subject of scepticism and outright derision - some might even describe it as a dumpster fire - perhaps it's time for them to walk away rather than throw good money after bad. Certainly this saga has proved that any publicity isn't necessarily good publicity...