Stoddart Threatens Court Action to Block Prost Sale

Paul Stoddart stood and angrily brandished a document that proved both he and Tom Walkinshaw were bidding against each other for the assets of the bankrupt Prost Grand Prix team as Formula One lurched towards domestic violence and threats of court action on the eve of the new season here in Melbourne on Friday. The fact that Michael Schumacher and his Ferrari team had strolled to a commanding dominance in opening practice was virtually forgotten.

Stoddart, owner of the Minardi team, withdrew a bid of one million dollars for the Prost assets when, according to his lawyers' advice, the fallen French team's entry for the World Championship expired at midnight (Australian time) on Thursday. An hour later, he was woken from his sleep to be told by a source in Paris that another bid, from a consortium associated with Walkinshaw, had acquired the assets with a bid of 2.5 million Euros. Stoddart, livid, promptly began talk of legal action and injunctions to block the deal.

It appeared, according to most close observers, that Walkinshaw's associates had interpreted the deadline applied to the bankrupted Prost team's entry as midnight in Paris, not Melbourne, a deciding factor. Now Walkinshaw, who has close links with Nissan, Renault and Ford, has the difficult task of assisting the new owners in putting together a credible team in time for the Brazilian Grand Prix in Sao Paulo in four weeks' time. It is virtually impossible for him to complete the deals needed for suppliers, for tyres, fuel and engines, before the Malaysian Grand Prix at Kuala Lumpur in a fortnight.

Stoddart said his bid was a spoiler, not one designed to ensure he could gain from the television-derived revenues due to be paid to the Prost team for its performances in the last two years. "I made myself a pact that if we end up with it, and I stress that our bid was a spoiling bid, it was to stop it from happening, what I would have done with it is simply put it to bed once and for all; I think we've had enough about Prost coming and Prost going."

Jean Todt, the Ferrari sporting director, made it clear that the Italian team would not be supplying any engines to the 12th team, whatever it may be called, if it rises from the ashes of Prost and takes part in the season. "We are not going to supply engines for a second team this year â€" whoever it is," he told a news conference on Friday afternoon.

Stoddart, in an extraordinary outburst, explained his view on proceedings when he said: "I won't beat around the bush. It's Tom Walkinshaw for sure, maybe under another company name. I think what he has done - and I have had five legal opinions, three in the UK, one QC, two barristers, and two in France, to say what he has done is outside of the governing document of Formula One, the Concorde Agreement. As far as I'm concerned, liquidation is a virtue of its word, it's the final state, and there is only one way you can pull something out of liquidation under any law, and that is to simply pay all the creditors.

"Pay all the creditors, pay all the staff, take the company over. I am told, reasonably reliably, I have some documents to back it up, that the receiver, or administrator, liquidator, judge - call him whatever you want - was offered between $30 and $60 million US for this team only some weeks ago, to take it over as a going concern. For whatever reason, he rejected those offers and, as we all know, the rest is history; it was placed into liquidation. I was made aware on 17th February that Tom Walkinshaw, through TWR, was making a bid for Prost Grand Prix.

"Obviously I have a financial interest in this and Minardi would be the loser should this travesty of justice be allowed to continue but, as I stated before, I believe it is outside of all legal remits. He made the bid, we were forced into something we didn't want to do, and that's why we have got some of our technical people missing at the moment, we spent the last ten days in France making a counter bid, trying to stop this stupidity from happening. I met with Tom yesterday, he asked me to back off. I looked at my watch, I said: Tom, it's over, it's over, you cannot now reclaim that entry. It is dead. And to my amazement, I was woken up at one o'clock this morning to be told he has actually done it.

"We are going to hear a conference, I believe, at 4 o'clock; I just can't wait for that. You will probably hear denials, I don't know what else you are going to hear, but if anyone wants to see the truth I have a rather large file here which I'm quite happy to share later on. It's wrong for Formula One, it's wrong for the creditors, it's wrong for the teams. I don't know how these guys feel but, as far as I'm concerned, I valued my entry at $25-30 million, if this goes ahead that's just been wiped out and you've probably taken $300 million off this pit lane today. Formula One has been through enough, there's a lot of sponsors that were here last year, they're not here this year, we needed a period of stability, common sense and unity. What have we got? Well, you tell me... I have spoken to a lot of people.

"I am not prepared to discuss the Concorde Agreement, I have five legal opinions here, but it's going to go to court, I will be taking it to court, probably before Malaysia, and I will be seeking an injunction to stop, if someone else doesn't do it, this from happening. And I actually ask now these two guys present, I think it's time that the team principals united to stop stupidity like this. This isn't Paul Stoddart with sour grapes, this is someone who cares passionately that we don't tear Formula One apart. We have had enough close calls lately; it's bad enough Prost went down and we don't need this rubbish."

Asked in more detail about why it appeared that offers of more than 30 million dollars to save the team had been rejected, before it was declared bankrupt, Stoddart said: "I don't actually know why this French liquidator - he is actually a judge - why this French judge has taken this decision. That's something that if the decision is taken to somewhere like the European Court of Appeal I'm sure is going to come out very clearly but it's not for me to comment on why he did what he did, I'm only relating the facts as I understand them and as have been checked by several counsels that simply say what has been done should not have been done and that the judge was not in the position he thinks he was in to be able to sell these assets."

He added: "Perhaps the sort of non-manufacturer teams and the smaller teams might have more of a sense of value of what their entry is worth, but let's just go back a little bit in time. BAR paid $30 million for Tyrrell, but they sold me all the assets bar the entry, so they obviously didn't want it. More recently, we have seen Jaguar take over Stewart, we've seen Renault take over Benetton, all these people have bought teams. When I bought Minardi, if I wanted to go down this route, I spent a sum of $30 million on Italian creditors. I suppose I could have turned around and said: ‘Hey, guys, I'm going to move it all to England, good-bye creditors, good-bye staff, you are on your bike, I will just have a new entry.' I don't think justice, none that I know of anyway, actually exists like that."

Not more than half an hour after Stoddart's outburst, Walkinshaw held his own news conference in the paddock. Surrounded by cameras and tape recorders, he did well not to laugh as he made it clear that he was not directly involved. "I really don't want to talk about Prost. I am more interested in Arrows," he said.

As the dust settled on an amazing day of intrigue, even by the standards of the Piranha Club, it emerged that Thomas Enge and Gaston Mazzacane were the favourites for the drives with the 'Phoenix' team and that if former Renault engines, re-badged by Mecachrome, were not available, the ancient Hart engines used by Walkinshaw's Arrows team in 1999 could be used. There were many heads shaking.

Among them was that of Craig Pollock who was instrumental in British American Tobacco's decision to spend 35 million dollars to purchase Tyrrell and gain entry to Formula One. He said he was full of admiration for Walkinshaw's swift move and savvy business tactics. Pollock suggested also that any interested observer should carry out a public search of the Walkinshaw companies, starting with TWR.

"Anyone who does will find a wall of mirrors," he said. "It is a very interesting set-up." The plot thickened by the hour and as dusk began to fall across Melbourne, there were few who understood what had happened, let alone what the future held.