When Mosley pushed Carlin to seek an F1 entry

Thursday 23 May marks the third anniversary of the passing of Max Mosley. While the youngsters hopefully reading this – probably some of my recent Formula 4 drivers! – possibly will not know of him, many other people will remember him, but not necessarily solely for good reasons.

Max courted controversy because of his upbringing, his family and his absolute self-belief. He was extremely intelligent, did not suffer fools lightly, and he made that very clear. He would have made a great politician, because he could debate better than anyone. But he chose to use his skills in the motorsport world, and we should be thankful for that.

As team principal of the March Formula 1 team in the 1970s, he became pals with a certain Bernie Ecclestone, owner of the Brabham Formula 1 team, and, later, the commercial rights to F1. Bernie helped Max become the president of FISA – then the motorsport arm of the FIA – in 1991, replacing the highly disruptive Jean-Marie Balestre. All of a sudden the old ‘garagistes’ had full control of F1 and world motorsport, and the rest is, as they say, history.

During my period of working with my uncles Vic and Steve Hollman at Bowman Racing in the British Formula 3 Championship, in 1990 we made a decision to build our own chassis to take on the mighty Ralt, Reynard and Dallara in the global F3 market. At exactly the same time, Eddie Jordan, who had run Johnny Herbert to the 1987 British F3 title and had gone on to great success in Formula 3000, had decided to build his own F1 car and team.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and, while we had some good results with the Bruce Carey-designed BC-1, it was never as successful as the beautiful Gary Anderson-pencilled 191. That began the demise of Bowman as an F3 powerhouse, while at Silverstone Eddie created the last true privateer F1 team on a wing and prayer.

By 2006, Jordan had become Midland, now run by Colin Kolles. While running Carlin Motorsport in numerous junior categories, I had a brief period in F1 working with Colin at Midland. However, despite having Carlin team members and ex-Carlin drivers, it became obvious that a small underfunded team could not compete anymore, so I swiftly returned ‘home’ to the junior categories. Here is where my brief contact with Max came about.

Carlin worked at Jordan in 2005, following the team's sale to Midland, but recognised he was fighting an uphill battle and returned to focus on junior categories

Photo by: Motorsport Images

I received an email from the FIA asking if I could host the president Mr Mosley for a meeting at our workshop in Aldershot. Obviously I said yes; however, I was very conscious that we did not quite have the facility that he was used to seeing in the F1 world. Nonetheless, the date was set, and I had the guys constantly cleaning and tidying up to try to make the best impression possible for when the FIA president arrived with his entourage.

Five minutes before the meeting was scheduled to start, I saw a Toyota Prius pull up and park right outside our office. I panicked, because I was expecting a large black German car to arrive with a chauffeur at the wheel, and did not want anyone blocking the parking space.

To my amazement, Max jumped out of the car on his own and walked over to the workshop. I rushed to the door and brought him in, and he was super-relaxed and friendly. After the niceties of offering a mug of builders’ tea (no Earl Grey or saucers at Carlin), we started chatting.

If Max had managed to persuade the teams to accept the cost cap earlier, then maybe Prodrive would have joined F1 and would still be there today

Max cut to the chase and asked why one of the world’s most successful junior teams had not placed a request for an entry for the 2008 F1 championship. My response was easy: I knew that Carlin did not have the funding to build the infrastructure needed to produce an F1 car, let alone compete with the manufacturer teams on running budgets.

I told him I would love to run a customer car/engine package even if it was a year out of date, because that would enable a team like ours to grow into F1. Max, of course, had supplied customer March cars to teams including Hesketh and Williams in the 1970s, and wanted such an option to exist, and he also said that he was pushing for a cost cap on F1 budgets. He asked me to place a request for an entry, which I duly did, knowing full well that Prodrive were the absolute best option for the new place on the grid.

Prodrive got the entry and proposed a customer car team, but that was vetoed by some of the smaller existing F1 teams, so Prodrive withdrew. They were the perfect candidates for F1 and, if Max had managed to persuade the teams to accept the cost cap earlier, then maybe Prodrive would have joined F1 and would still be there today.

PLUS: When Prodrive came close to an F1 team for 2010

It’s funny how things turn out. Max was pushing hard for new teams and encouraging them despite the financial difficulties they would face. Now the scales have tipped to make F1 teams viable financially and therefore valuable, yet F1 itself will not allow a super-credible entity in the form of Andretti-Cadillac to join. It’s a cliche, but Max will be turning in his grave.

F1's stubborn opposition to Andretti's bid would likely earn a short shrift from Mosley

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images