Back with a Vengeance

The Star of David

On the eve of the San Marino Grand Prix, two months ago, Prodrive's finance director Clive Scrivener walked into David Richards' office, waving a piece of paper at the company's founder and chairman.

"You want the good news or the bad news?" Scrivener began. "Well, the good news, you've got the entry for the 2008 Formula One World Championship. The bad news, we want to know what the hell is your plan."

There was never a doubt that Prodrive would be picked by the FIA, Formula One's governing body, as the 12th team for 2008. There was never a question of how suitable Richards and his company are for the task at hand. In fact, it could be argued that never before in the history of Formula One has there been a new, private entry with a better reputation and more credentials than Prodrive.

None could boast the diverse and successful resume that Richards has accumulated since he himself won the World Rally Championship as Ari Vatanen's co-driver in 1981. The Wales-born 54-year-old had founded Prodrive over two decades ago, leading it to six WRC titles, five British Touring Car Championship titles, winning the GTS class in Le Mans, and in total racking up hundreds of winner's trophies from rallies and races in every kind of category imagined.

Except for Formula One, that is. It's the one category that Richards has yet to conquer - he made a first brief attempt as team principal with Benetton, in 1997; then a second, somewhat more successful strike with BAR-Honda, in 2002-2004. But in both these cases, he was the servant of other masters. He was employed to do the job set out by the owners, to carry out their plan.

Third time around, Richards is going to do it on his own terms. It will be the culmination of everything he's experienced in the commercial, technical, political and competitive aspects of motorsport. "I've got it in my mind very clearly," he says, a big cheshire-cat smile spread across his always-stubby face. "I know very, very clearly what's my plan."

It was his 54th birthday last Saturday. Spending his weekend at the Acropolis Rally for another round of the World Rally Championship - where he is both the series' commercial rights holder and owner of the Subaru World Rally Team - Richards decided, on the spur of the moment, to take his wife, Karen, on board their private Lear Jet to Le Mans, "because I thought it would be better to have dinner in France than dinner in Greece."

He's on Britain's Sunday Times Rich List, with a personal value of £75 million GBP, sharing in 2005 the 654th spot with the likes of media mogul Simon Fuller, Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins, and England's football captain David Beckham.

Yet in the world of Formula One, you sense that fans don't know much about him - he's more associated with a rather prolonged spat with former world champion Jacques Villeneuve, an unpleasant legal battle with Jenson Button, and a premature end to his reign as BAR-Honda team principal. If anything, those outside the motorsport and motoring industry tend to underestimate David Richards.

Which is why his biggest challenge, coming into Formula One in 18 months' time, will be to reinvent his Prodrive brand. For all its 1,000-strong workforce and over 100 million GBP annual turnover, Prodrive remains a business-to-business brand, virtually unknown to the general public.

But before Richards can concentrate solely on his Formula One ambition and map out Prodrive's new brand identity, there are other matters that require his immediate attention - starting with the revival of the Aston Martin marque, and their target of taking a class win in next weekend's 24 Hours of Le Mans.

USA vs. little UK

Few brand names in the automotive world are capable of evoking passion and loyalty in the way that, say, the Ferrari name does. Most certainly, the following of the Italian company transcends beyond the number of its car owners or its motorsport fans. Ferrari is, put simply, a worldwide icon.

When it comes to glamour, however, if there is any brand that could potentially be regarded in the same category as Ferrari - even if not in the same scale - it has to be Aston Martin. The marque gained its iconic status in no small part due to the many James Bond movies it has featured in, but some of it also stems from the glorious days of Aston's late 1950s success in sportscar racing, at the hands of Stirling Moss and Roy Salvadori.

Last year, Prodrive brought Aston Martin back and put it on track. And what a remarkable revival it has been: the new DBR9 won its race debut, the 12 Hours of Sebring, in the American Le Mans Series, following it with a home win at Silverstone, in the FIA GT series. And by the end of the two-day qualifying for the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Aston Martin Racing were on pole position and clear favourites to win the event on their first try in several decades.

It didn't quite end that way. Overheating issues meant the team finished third in the GT1 class, giving Corvette a 1-2 finish and a fourth consecutive class win at the prestigious race. This year, however, Richards is bullish about Aston's chances of achieving the task at hand.

"I think we're on target for this year," he says, observing the testing lap times on the TV screen at the top floor of the Aston Martin motorhome at Le Mans last weekend. "We've got a year more experience with the car, so I think we are going to be strong this year against the Corvette - and that's all it is: it's United States versus little old UK."

Aston Martin would end the official testing day well ahead of the nearest Corvette, but then the General Motors-owned team have never been known to show their hand in testing, nor in qualifying for that matter. In the five years they have entered Le Mans, the Corvettes took four class wins and have never been on pole.

"Yeah, I know, they are very calculated in the way they do it, they are very, very professional," Richards responds. "It's a bit like the tortoise and the hare - and boy, we screwed up last year. We rocketed ahead, then we made a cock up, then we rocketed ahead... But we learned a lot of lessons from that; let's hope we don't do the same mistakes this year."

Aston Martin will have an increased presence in the 74th Le Mans event. Other than the two DBR9 cars for the Aston Martin Racing team, there are two private DBR9 entries in the GT1 class - one, with BMS Scuderia Italia; the other, with Russian Age Racing. It potentially puts Richards in a conflict of interest, should a private entry beat the 'factory' team.

"No, I think it's healthy for us," he says. "Obviously I wear two hats in this, and I'd like to see us win. But also I'd like to see our customers do very well as well. We have that same situation in our rally programmes and many other motorsport programmes around the world. So it's not unusual. We have a team of engineers for each of those programmes, and I know they are all as determined as anybody to see their guys win.

"The whole philosophy of the Aston Martin programme was to provide a car that could be run consistently and competitively and economically by customers around the world. And so, to that end, it would be a vindication of that policy if one of our customers beat us here. But I think that's early days for that to happen yet, because they have limited experience. But it will happen one day, and it would be a great day."

BG: So you have no qualms if one of the customers beat the 'works' team

Richards: "Absolutely not. They have absolutely identical equipment - the engines are managed and built by the same people, and an engine from one of our cars could equally go to one of their cars. The transmission, everything else is the same. The data is available to them - we share all the information. And so, you know, it's all part of the philosophy, and I have no qualms about it."

You have to hand it to Richards for identifying the business potential of running the Aston Martin racing programme. Prodrive has acquired the exclusive worldwide rights for Aston Martin in motor racing, but Richards is not content with success at endurance racing or winning this year's Le Mans. His end-game is to put the Aston Martin brand on a par with the likes of Porsche, Maserati and even Ferrari in the private sportscar sector. He wants to see grandstands covered in green and highways splashed with sleek looking Vantages and Vanquishes and DBRs.

"Aston Martin has focused on producing road cars and had to put all their efforts in that direction and didn't have the financial or personal resources to divert into motor racing," Richards explains. "So I said, let me take on that responsibility - I'll take it on as a business opportunity, and we'll just run it.

"I think that not just in the UK, but in sportscar racing worldwide, there is only one marque that could challenge Ferrari and that is Aston Martin. And if you look at the new products that are coming out of Aston Martin, you will see that they live up to that expectation as well."

BG: The thing is, ALMS and FIA GT are very limited as far as public reach. They're not as popular as other forms of racing

Richards: "No, they're not, you're right. But if you look at the demographics of the people that come to Le Mans and the people who watch ALMS in America, they're very on-target for Aston Martin customers. They're a very intelligent group of people who follow it with great interest, and I would suggest they are very influential in the buying process for sportscars. So it's still a very important group to reach out to."

BG: But the way Ferrari, for example, has built the brand, it was beyond the car-buying audience

Richards: "Yes, but you've got to start with the car-buying audience, and you have to actually communicate effectively with your core group to start with. If you can't dominate your own back yard, in PR terms, then you can't improve the wider approach. So you have to start from a point. It's always very foolish in my view to stretch the brand too quickly, too fast, into diverse areas.

"You can buy today a coffee cup with a Ferrari flag on it. Or a t-shirt, or a pen, all those sort of things. The brand extends beyond the cars themselves. But you can't do that until you've got the product right and you've got your own customer-base, where you indoctrinate from a brand.

"So the racing programme is designed to reinvest in the Aston Martin brand, to actually update it, to say to the customers, 'Aston Martin is no longer a quirky little car that you couldn't rely on to get to work each day, it's a really high-tech piece of equipment now that's got great style, a great Britishness, but also it's a great piece of technology in the automotive product.' And once that's right, and the race programme reinforces those values, then from thereon you can then stretch it and go into other areas."

BG: Do you have a long term vision of where you're going to take Aston Martin?

Richards: "Yes. What differentiates Prodrive from our competitors is that in everything we do, we do tend to sit down and say, right, we're here for the long term, we'll plan out over the next ten years. Lots of people in motor racing say 'you can't make plans for ten years in motor racing' - well sure, you can't make plans for five years, probably not even for three.

"But you make a plan, and then you have to be flexible to change the plan as it progresses. The rules change, the regulations change, the circumstances change, but that doesn't mean you start without a plan. That just means the plan has to change as a result of it. And our forte has always been in actually moving with the times, adapting to circumstances.

"You know, we wouldn't have done this racing programme for Aston Martin if we just said we'll only do the basic business model that we've done in the past - where a manufacturer comes along to us, underwrites the whole programme, and away we go, we're on - because it wouldn't have worked with Aston Martin.

"And we wouldn't have gone into Formula One if we did not look at the new regulations and said, well, the whole circumstances are changing in Formula One, so the opportunity has now opened for us to be there. So you've got to be very open-minded about these things, but fundamentally you've still got to have a plan."

BG: So what's your end-game for Aston Martin?

Richards: "Well, clearly the Aston product is based around participating in product-based motor racing. So it's not in the current plan for us to go into the prototype side of Le Mans. We've always viewed that GT racing, for the core car, the base car, is where we want to be, and you see that the GT3 programme, now rolling out with the DBRS, is starting to get even broader reach than the GT1 category. I think that'll will be a big category for us in the longer term.

"We're looking at the V8 now, we're building a rally car for the Vantage V8 - not a conventional rally car you see in the world championship, but in certain events in Europe now you've got tarmac events where people would like to drive sportscars, and Porsche's dominated in that category. We've produced a car for that, and we'll do more of that in the future - possibly that might make a suitable model for a one-make championship.

"So we'll end up with three very clear and distinct products. We'll end up with the DBR9 car in GT1; the DBRS model predominantly in GT3; and then it's down to the Vantage V8, which we'll work towards producing one-make championships around the world."

Richards stares intently at the TV timing screen as Tomas Enge, Aston's regular driver, goes out for another testing lap, moments before lunch break begins. The Czech posts the team's first lap in the three minutes and 53 seconds bracket - they will end the day with a 3:51 lap - and David's eyes twinkle with mischief. "Oooh, we're in the 53s, that's incredible!" he exclaims, then muttering: "That'll frighten the Corvettes..."

For the three hours he's dedicated to this interview, it is just a momentary lapse on Richards' part; a glimpse to the highly competitive and incredibly ambitious racer in him, before he switches back to the calculated spokesman who knows all too well that it is always better to be underestimated than to create a hype, which will inevitably end with disappointment.

"You know, it was a very close run last year, so I don't think it will be vastly different this time around," he returns to the party line. "We could have won last year, and I guess either of us could win this year. But we are ready for it, certainly."

Demolition JV

You cannot visit France without drinking some fine red wine, and you just can't interview David Richards at length and not bring up Jacques Villeneuve.

Richards himself reluctantly accepts this alignment - he won't avoid any question, but he certainly doesn't look thrilled to discuss this topic again. "Well I think it's blown out of all proportions, quite frankly," he says on the outset.

Jacques Villeneuve left the Williams team in 1999 to join the newly founded British American Racing team, headed by his long-time friend and manager Craig Pollock, and with the financial backing of British American Tobacco.

The team, by all accounts, had a disastrous debut season, scoring absolutely no championship points and lingering at the back with a slow and unreliable car. It got better in 2000, but only just, and no one would have begrudged Villeneuve if he decided to move to a more promising team - and he was certainly sought after at the time.

Instead, Villeneuve chose loyalty and stuck with Pollock's outfit. A multi-million contract that placed him as the second-highest paid driver in history, after Michael Schumacher, helped sweeten the aggravation, and even more so did a works engine deal signed with Honda that year.

But by the end of 2001, the BAT shareholders have had enough. The operation was leaking cash, the results weren't coming, and the 2006 deadline for a ban on tobacco advertising in Formula One was hovering above the company. At some point, BAT will want to sell the team and recuperate some of its losses. Who's going to buy a team, at asking price, whose only real asset is an expensive former world champion?

In comes Richards. His company Prodrive has long enjoyed a close relationship with BAT - the 555 cigarette brand has been the main sponsor of Prodrive's Subaru World Rally Team - and with impeccable resume across the motorsport industry, there was a lot of sense in hiring Prodrive and Richards to improve BAR's situation - both on track and in the financial books.

Pollock was, effectively, ousted from his role as team chief, but he was still around, both as a minority shareholder and as Villeneuve's manager. The recipe for controversy was concocted from the start.

What followed, in a nutshell, were two highly acrimonious seasons that ended with Richards notifying Villeneuve on the eve of the final race of the 2003 season, in Japan, that the Canadian's contract with BAR will not be renewed for 2004, and Villeneuve, in turn, promptly quitting the team - a day before the Grand Prix weekend was about to start (and much to the relief of Richards, no doubt).

"I look back at it now quite calmly, and I'm comfortable with everything I did at the time," Richards says today. "Remember, I inherited a situation.

"When I came to BAR, I was told by BAT: 'look David, we have a team here that have not produced the success that we hoped it would do; financially, it is unpredictable, we don't have any clear view on budgets, and it's leaking money way ahead of where we were told it would do; and we want to sell it in the longer term. So we have to address all those three issues.' So I came in with a very clear view of what I had to achieve.

"I inherited the Jacques contract. Quite frankly, I came in with a very open mind about that. I had no issues except for the fact that it was a very substantial part of our budget. Very substantial. And I was there to pull back the budget and make it more value for money. And that's what I did in terms of the team. If you remember, in the early days, we've cut back the team by about 20% in terms of numbers.

"But it was still clear that we were spending a disproportionate amount on our driver's fee at that stage. Albeit Jacques was a world champion, and the contract was done, and in the circumstances when he secured the contract it probably appeared to everyone to be value for money.

"So my view was that we could best spend that money on testing and developing and speeding up our test programme. I couldn't just go and ask for an infamous amount of money from the sponsors or Honda. I think Jacques probably viewed that I could, and that his side of it was irrelevant. But my view was that we could accelerate our development far faster if we had more of that money into the pool."

The problem was, however, that Richards shared this view with the press, quite publicly suggesting that Villeneuve was a hindrance to the team's progress. Coupled with the big question mark hanging over Villeneuve's future in Formula One, the affair badly discredited Villeneuve and his management, who eventually found themselves out of the paddock for 2004.

But even today, some three years later, Richards is adamant that Villeneuve has no one to blame but himself.

"If he was prepared to extend his contract - albeit for the same amount of money - then I could have used the money earlier, and he would have been racing in BAR-Honda in 2004," Richards exclaims. "But he said to me quite clearly, 'I'll take my luck on that, thank you very much. I'd rather stick with the contract I've got and see what happens at the end of the year, I'm sure I'll be in demand at the end of the year.'"

BG: So your offer was that whatever he was due to receive for 2003, he'd be receiving for 2003 and 2004 combined?

Richards: "Correct. It was in the second year that I proposed that, so it was just split your fee over two years, and you're secure for another year, and you would have gotten bonuses as well, because bonuses wouldn't have been affected.

"But he said no, no, at the end of the year we'll just negotiate and see how I'll be in a position then. So he took that decision himself - or his management probably took that decision for him. So there we go, that was... fair enough."

BG: Why talk to the press about it, though? I've never seen any team chief discuss his driver's salary with the press

Richards: "I think you forget the interest in Jacques at the time from the press. The reporters made up their own minds about this, as much as anything. They're just looking to make stories out of it. And clearly an under-performing team with an ex world champion paid a fortune makes for a great story."

BG: Personally, I think there was no going around the fact that you came in at the expense of an ousted shareholder, while his protege was still in the team. You needed to weaken that fraction, annihilate the internal opposition to your leadership

Richards: "I look at it slightly differently. I see your point, but my view was that the team had been built around Jacques Villeneuve, and this was not a sustainable position for the long term. I think it's the same with any driver. I wouldn't care who the driver was - I don't believe that's a healthy or sustainable position.

"And so anything that I did in that respect, yes, I would quite clearly stand up and say I would not accept a team built around an individual, and so some of my actions might have been as a result of that philosophy. But not in any way personal or in any way about Craig - that's completely misconstruing the situation.

"So no, people should not take anything on a personal level like this. This was purely done in order to achieve the task I was set out to do, and for the long-term good of the team. And I think I was vindicated in my actions."

BG: I think there's no doubt that you managed to eradicated the 'Team Villeneuve' element from BAR-Honda. The end result was certainly that. But I think you did make it personal, and Jacques Villeneuve believes that you also destroyed his reputation in the process

Richards: "Do you honestly think that to be the case? Sometimes, you have to look at yourself to know what the real issues are...

"People believe what they want to believe, you know. I had one task to do, I set out to do it, and I'm very comfortable with what I achieved at the end of the day on that front. I think the shareholders at BAT feel the same as well, and I can tell you quite frankly: Honda would not have bought into that team had it been any different."

BG: OK, so in order to achieve your goals, and with Honda's pressure, Villeneuve had to be removed from the team. Which raises the question, why did you wait until the end of the season to tell him his contract will not be renewed? Why not make it clear to begin with?

Richards: "Because the decision was not made right until the last minute."

BG: Why not?

Richards: "Because it was a decision that involved a number of stakeholders: it involved Honda, it involved BAT, and it involved the team. And each party had a view of it, and it was pointless making a decision earlier than that, if the decision wasn't clear. But, ultimately, Honda were the influencing factor."

It is a curious thought how Villeneuve's career would have panned out had he accepted Richards' offer. Richards can rationalise it, and certainly BAR-Honda, with their limited budget, had no business paying outrageous salaries to any of their employees. But Richards was effectively offering Villeneuve to drive for free in 2004, not including bonuses.

In hindsight, Villeneuve would have probably been better off taking the offer - he would have at least stayed in Formula One, and he would have driven the second-best car of the season - the best car he himself has had a chance to drive since his championship winning season, in 1997.

But, one suspects, by mid-2003 there was little incentive for Villeneuve to believe in BAR's prospects and even less so that Richards could be trusted. The Canadian, too, somewhat underestimated the Welshman throughout their encounter.

He won't be the last to make that mistake.

Pushing the Button

In the summer of 2002, David Richards signed Jenson Button on a long term contract with BAR-Honda. The then-22 years old Briton had a respectable debut season with Williams in 2000, but then saw his stocks plummet after two bad years at Benetton/Renault. It got so bad, that F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone went on record in criticising Richards for hiring Button, urging the Prodrive boss to "think again" about his selection.

"I have a lot of respect for David, but I would not have gone with Button," Ecclestone said years later. "I didn't think at the time he had what it takes, certainly on the basis of his performance with Renault. But David was right in this instance."

Richards, without doubt, salvaged Button's career. He truly believed in him at a time when many were quick to write him off. Having known Button since he was a child, Richards was his biggest advocate in the paddock, always quick to praise his new driver in every interview.

That Button delivered, is without question. In 2003, he was more than a match to teammate Jacques Villeneuve, and in 2004, he absolutely made the most of BAR-Honda's renaissance - taking his first F1 podium finish, and racking up in total 10 visits to the podium, a third place in the drivers' championship standings - and second for BAR-Honda in the constructors'.

If this was a movie, Jenson Button would have been standing in the Christmas office party at Brackley singing "To Sir With Love" to David Richards. But in the soap opera of Formula One, he instead sent him a fax - well, his lawyers did, to be accurate - notifying Richards that Button has signed with the Williams team for 2005.

To this day, nearly two years after that famous August night, when the news of Button's defection has been made public (and by Richards himself, it must be said), it still beggars belief that men with any real knowledge of the situation - namely, Button himself and his management team at the time - could have thought that they could get away with that kind of stunt.

It is still incomprehensible that they were able to mislead Frank Williams, if not the entire paddock, into believing Christmas arrived early that year; and it remains a mystery why any of them thought that David Richards - a man who once took Richard Burns to the high court in London and forced him to honour his contract with his WRC team - would roll over and play dead.

In the end, the Contracts Recognition Board ruled unequivocally in favour of BAR-Honda. But the relationship between Richards and his prodigal son was never quite the same again.

"I think it was more about the people around him that I didn't think were good for him," Richards reflects back. "I made that very clear, that I think the people around him are badly advising him. Their motives were not in the interest of him or the team.

"I have a very strong view about the relationship with drivers and the relationship with the team. In the main, certainly in our case, we have a strong relationship with drivers, and we try and build a strong loyalty with the drivers.

"But sometimes the management people behind the scenes think that there are better riches to be had in other places and are misinformed and misguided by their own lack of knowledge of the sport or knowledge of what's going on out there.

"And so it's my view that Jenson's management team were not serving his own best interest. I think that was the fundamental root of any issue. Other than that, I don't think there were any real issues."

Yet Button didn't seem to quite learn from his own mistakes. A year later, with a Williams contract in place for 2006, the Briton replayed the whole 2005 saga - in reverse. This time, he wanted out of his Williams contract; this time, he wanted to stay with Honda.

BG: I had this image of you rolling on the floor laughing when, a year later, Button told Williams that he wants to stay at BAR...

Richards: "Well, he made a very sound decision in my view, albeit with great irony, as you said, because Frank put an awful lot in his career in early days, and there was clearly a watertight contract there. But there we go, and now that's where he is."

BG: Forgive me for asking, but as a driver, is he actually worth all this?

Richards: "At the time, when I brought him to the team, I believed he was, and he did a great job for the team, and we got the team up there, second behind Ferrari, and got loads of podiums in 2004, and he's done a great job for us. So he was great for the team at the time."

BG: What about now?

Richards takes his time to answer, eventually saying, quite slowly: "You know, you can't isolate individuals. It's about individuals working in harmony with the organisation around them, with all the partners getting it together.

"That's what you see at Ferrari: you see a real modulus unit, they all support each other, all work effectively together, not a chink in the armour over the Monaco affair with Michael [Schumacher] - not one chink, not even one slight wink from any of them that gave away that any of them thought any different from the party line.

"And that's what makes for great organisations and great teams, and to achieve that, all of you have to be part and parcel of that, and you must get rid of anyone who doesn't play the game and doesn't feel a party to that."

BG: Are you suggesting that Button is not playing the game that way?

Richards: "No, I'm not saying that; I'm just saying that this is the philosophy of how you must work as an organisation, and I just wonder whether today that team have that same intimacy that we created in that 2004 season."

BG: My impression is that Button started to believe his own publicity, perhaps prematurely. After all, in absolute terms, he has not delivered just yet

Richards: "This is the challenge for running a team, for that management of a team. It's that carrot and stick approach with the drivers. Because the drivers are the dominant factor in terms of the communication to the outside world. What they say, what they do - you can't get away from it. Whatever you think, the driver is always going to be the key influences in how the world perceives you and your team. And hence the problems I encountered in the Villeneuve era.

"Those are dominant people. They're the ones the press wants to speak to, the ones that get the column inches. And their opinions, rightly or wrongly, are the ones that tend to dominate the scene. So people tend to be quite shy of challenging the drivers, because they don't want to cause rifts and conflicts.

"But even the best drivers need the addressing of issues and failures, and where they can improve and what they can't do. A proper, strong leadership will do that, but it will result in conflicts. How you resolve those, and how you manage that, and whether it leads on to success jointly, is just how it works. It can work like that wonderful relationship with Jean Todt and Michael; or it can degenerate like it did with myself and Jacques. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.

"But you've got to not be frightened of challenging, and you've got to build their respect that they actually accept that your views should be given equal due to their own opinions, and this inevitably causes problems in teams."

Despite the implicit doubt that Richards may be conveying here over the strength of the team management at Honda today, he is extremely careful not to slight his successor at the head of BAR-Honda, a man he himself has brought to the team from Prodrive.

Nick Fry was the chief operating officer at Prodrive for five years before he was appointed BAR-Honda CEO last year, shortly after the Japanese car maker bought into the team and terminated prematurely their contract with Richards and Prodrive.

There were plenty of speculations at the time that Honda wanted Richards out because they did not like the way he handled the 'Buttongate' affair; others suggested Honda were unhappy with his siding with the FIA over certain regulatory matters; and further suggestions had Richards signing the testing ban agreement in Brazil in 2004 much against the wish of Honda themselves.

Whatever the truth, Richards achieved the goals that BAT set out for him - the team were no longer leaking money, the results were there, with second place in the constructors' championship, and with Honda buying into the team, all targets were crossed off the task list.

Post-2004, Richards was honoured by the Queen of England with a Commander of the British Empire for his services to motorsport in the 2005 New Year's honours list; he had just obtained the exclusive rights to Aston Martin Racing; he had a joint-venture with Ford in the Australian V8 Supercars championship; and the commercial rights for the World Rally Championship needed his focus and attention.

And all that time, BAR-Honda had an absolutely horrendous year that can be summed with two podium finishes, two race bans, two scandals (the fuel-cell disqualification, and Buttongate II), and a sixth place finish in the 2005 constructors' championship.

You cannot help but feel that Richards left at the right time.

"Well it was always going to be the most difficult year of BAR, and I've told everyone before, that the year ahead was to be the most challenging year," Richards says. "Because in 2004 the team was very good, clearly, and the drivers - Jenson particularly - drove superbly, and we had the fortune to have Michelin tyres on the car and everything fit into place.

"But, you have to say that our major competitors [in 2004] did not cover themselves in glory, so we were made to perhaps look a little bit better than we quite frankly deserved at the time.

"So it was inevitable the next year was going to be a challenging year, a very difficult year. And it was about managing that expectations, that process, particularly inside the team, that was always going to be a difficult one."

BG: There was also a lot of controversy, what with the two-race ban and the hidden fuel cell

Richards: "It's very unfortunate circumstances, I think to a certain extent they're right to believe that others could have been caught with the same problem. It was their misfortune to be at the wrong place in the wrong time."

BG: So other teams had similar systems?

Richards: "That is the suggestion, yes..."

BG: The suggestion was also that you in fact already had an illegal car in 2004

Richards: "I strongly deny that. I would also stand up for the people in the team that they would never knowingly cheat. I know the people there, the integrity of the people there, and that I can vouch for.

"But, motor racing has always been like this. There are some things that are black and white - let's measure the length of this, and let's have a rule that says that - but there are so many areas of motorsport that are in the grey, and the task of teams and clever engineers is about how far you can go into the grey without stepping over the line into the black.

"I've always had a view with the guys in my teams that it is their task to challenge and push the limits in every way they possibly can. As long as they can come and stand in front of me and explain to me in a convincing way why what they've done is actually legal, legitimate, albeit in the grey area, then I'll support them to the hilt. I won't support anyone going over the line into the area of black, blatant cheating, and I certainly don't think anyone at BAR did that last year."

BG: There's always the conspiracy theory that the FIA wanted to get Honda for political reasons...

Richards: "Well, these Machiavellian theories come out everywhere, don't they? But the reality of it is we will never know. I've not read the Da Vinci Code or seen the film yet, but I dare say, Formula One has all the same plot-line and twists as that.

"It's also an extraordinarily aggressive environment. I like coming to sportscar races and rallies because, whilst you have the competition there, it's a far more civilised environment, a very friendly environment. I've just shaken hands with all the Corvette team this morning, and I went and saw them all and had a chat and we laughed about it, and sure, there's rivalry on track, but we're great pals outside that.

"For some reason or other, in Formula One, it does not work like that. You can sense the aggression in the paddock, in the whole way that thing operates."

And that is what Richards wants to return to in 2008?

F1 is Spelt IF Backwards

David Richards' first stint in Formula One lasted less than a year. He was appointed team principal at Benetton in 1997, replacing Flavio Briatore, and by the end of that season, Richards was gone. He had a clear vision where the team should be heading, and the Benetton family had a clear vision how to pull out of Formula One.

The second stint, with BAR-Honda, saw Richards via Prodrive hired to improve the team's prospects ahead of a BAT pullout. After three years (of the original five-year plan), Richards was gone - and BAT sold their part to Honda shortly after.

He hasn't been to the F1 paddock since the final round of the 2004 season. And he doesn't attend team meetings over the 2008 discussions - David Lapworth, the former performance director for Subaru World Rally Team, represents Prodrive in those debates.

You get the sense that this time around, Richards wants to make a proper entrance through the paddock gates, on his terms, with his own vision for the future, and leave a long-lasting impression that will etch the Prodrive brand into the history of Formula One, alongside Ferrari and McLaren.

At the age of 54, he knows he only has a few more years to actively lead his army and win their final battle for supremacy. He once promised his wife, Karen, that by the age of 55 he "will be on a beach somewhere," but, he says, laughing, "I've had a stay of execution." And he is now taking his time, carefully planning his last hurrah.

"My wife keeps reminding me all the time, don't compromise your principals in what you're going into," Richards says. "Inevitably, we will partner with different people; to achieve what we want to achieve, we can't do it alone. And therefore there will always be a compromise. But it's a question of just how much you have to compromise in order to achieve what you want to achieve.

"I have a feeling that in this third time around, there will be less likelihood that I will have to make large compromises. Certainly, these are different circumstances altogether, but I think people have got the confidence in me now, that I will have a stronger voice.

"We've learned a lot over the last few years - I've learned a lot. And certainly one thing I have learned above everything else is not to underestimate the task ahead of us and not to think that this is going to be easy, because it's going to be an extraordinary period of time."

BG: Are you going to be a constructor, or are you going to...

Richards: "I can honestly say that today, right now, it's a clean sheet of paper. On the one extreme, we would sit down and we'll build our new factory, and we'll go out there and recruit all the best people we can afford to employ, and we'll start and build our own cars and do a deal with an engine supply and turn up on the grid completely with every aspect of it designed and developed by ourselves.

"That is one extreme. The other extreme, we turn up at the backdoor of the Ferrari factory with a couple of transporters, load the cars on board and turn up at the race circuit with a couple dozen people. And that's the other extreme.

"And somewhere in between is where the answer lies."

BG: Is there any question at all that you might not be Prodrive? That you might do what you did with Subaru in rally or Aston Martin in sportscar?

Richards: "Oh no, no. Well, there might be some ultimate financial constraints on us that determine that. Something might be put to us that is so compelling in its commercial appeal that we will have to do that. But no, at the moment, the Prodrive element will have to be at the forefront."

BG: I have the impression that Prodrive is a business-to-business brand, not so much a consumer brand

Richards: "It is. Correct."

BG: So how are you going to change that when you go to F1?

Richards: "You should have been sitting at our dinner table last night! My wife and I were sitting, having a quiet chat over a glass of wine, having dinner in Le Mans, talking exactly about that. I was explaining to her that we are predominantly today a B2B brand, and we now have to reach out and become far more consumer-focused and think about what changes are necessary to achieve that step.

"We thought about it a lot, we had a look at it three years ago, but we pulled back, and now we have to rethink that whole business. We'll start by research about how people perceive us - first in the inner circle and then in the broader circle, and then we'll start to think about it more carefully.

"It's early yet, and it will evolve over the summer months. I plan to go down to Cromwell for a couple of months in the summer and just sit around and think about it and work it out."

BG: So you are you going to be hands-on in the F1 project all the way?

Richards: "Very much so. That's why I'm clearing my desk from a lot of the other responsibilities I have at the moment, to make sure that's feasible. But I'm not going to do it forever. I've got a very clear time span in which I'm going to do it, and then, when I decide that I've got the team in place to carry on, I will turn to other things."

BG: There are many who believe Prodrive's motorsport programmes tend to falter when you're not involved

Richards: "That's wrong. It would never have achieved all it has today without all those people, and if I haven't have been there, I suspect many of those things would have happened anyway.

"I suppose I drive things with a sort of momentum and enthusiasm that encourages other people. But also, if I'm good at one thing, it's about picking good people and about supporting good people. I see my role as being about support. It's not about actually doing anymore, because most of the people out there do it far better than I could do anyway, they've got the skills.

"Inevitably, people say that about organisations - they say that about Frank Williams and the Williams team, Ron Dennis and McLaren, and you can name them all. There is one person that is quite naturally a figurehead for an organisation, and I believe motor racing - unlike corporate cultures - actually needs that. It's a bit like an army - an army needs a general at the front. Somebody who is prepared to lead at the front and not shy away from difficult decisions."

BG: Well, I think it's a compliment to you and to Prodrive, that once you submitted your application, there was no doubt you were going to get the entry, that you'd be the 12th team. That must have felt really good

Richards: "It was gratifying to think that we have the support of the motorsport community and everybody out there. A number of people from the [FIA] World Council came to see me at different functions since then and said, 'we supported you wholeheartedly'; from South America to Australia to all over the world.

"So that in itself was rewarding. But I think getting the entry was the easy bit."

BG: Are you ready for what's coming, David? You know better than anyone, it's quite a big leap

Richards: "Well, if you read Rudyard Kipling's poem 'If', and if you read the line that says, 'If you can make one heap of all your winnings, and risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss' - that's the life I live by. So I stand by that."

Sidebar: the Rally Master

Whatever awaits David Richards in Formula One, there is no doubt that he will forever be regarded as the Rally Master. Not only has he taken his team to every possible title, in virtually every possible rally championship around the world, but the Welshman has also acquired the commercial rights to the sport, making him somewhat akin to Bernie Ecclestone in Formula One - although the scales are vastly different and, Richards himself says, so are the targets.

"What we discovered, as a team, was that we're very dependent on the commercial promotion of the WRC, and if the commercial promotion of the sport didn't work, then we were one of the principal stakeholders to suffer from it," he explains. "Hence my role, why I got involved in that. And it was by default, not by design. Everyone said I've got a view of being Bernie Ecclestone of the world rallying - quite the contrary; it was purely in the interest of saving our major business."

Whereas rallying accounted for the core business in Prodrive in its inception, by now Richards says "it probably represents no more than 20% of the business."

In the last five years, however, he himself has stepped away from their rally team and concentrated on the commercial and TV programming of the World Rally Championship, through his company ISC. Yet now, he reveals, he is about to step away from that too, and before focusing all his attention on the F1 team, he will again get involved in the Subaru World Rally Team, after a rather turbulent year for the outfit.

"My role in the commercial aspect is actually coming to an end now," he explains. "The sport has adjusted itself to the needs of the media, the TV requirements, and I see this now as an opportune time, because over the next month I will be standing back from that and handing over to an excellent team of people we've got in place running it today.

"And the great benefit from that, it will then allow me to put back my blue-and-yellow Subaru shirt and have a stronger involvement back in the team again, because that's, quite frankly, the bit I enjoy."

BG: Why are you pulling back from the whole commercial rights operation, actually? I don't think that has come to fruition just yet?

Richards: "No, it has. It's a mature business now. It is different. In the early stages, it required a big interface with the sport. It required the sport to understand the needs of the media, understand the needs of commercial demands from outside. And so that was the interface I provided. I was the one who spent lots of time with the organisers and lots of time with the teams, lots of time with the FIA, trying to coax people into a change and restructuring things for the future.

"That process is coming to an end, in my view, and it is moving more and more into conventional media-promoter relationship now. The boundaries are defined, if you like. The FIA knows what's required of ISC, the teams know it, and the relationship with the event organisers is all established in quite strong contractual forms. And with that job done, you can hand over to a professional team who will take it forward."

BG: What are your thoughts in general about the WRC today, with so few manufacturers left competing?

Richards: "Well, the World Rally Championship is no different to any other championship around the world, where you see the effect of the economy on the car manufacturers and the activities they're supporting. Whether it's in Champ Car and IRL in America or the DTM in Germany - you can look at a myriad of motorsport categories around the world, and the same issues apply to them all.

"F1 has bucked the trend, and that's in my view down to Bernie and the way he's managed to maintain it. But I still think that it's a bubble, and the only way to stop it from happening to Formula One is in the technical rules and the way they're going about this for 2008.

"But in the World Rally Championship, you're naturally only going to see four principal manufacturers, and we've gone through a change - a change that has been seen in Formula One 20 years ago, perhaps, where the role of the manufacturers is not to participate. The role of the manufacturer is to develop the car, homologate the car, and then hand it on to the private teams.

"And we have to find an affordable base for the private teams to compete. And, in reality, it's what we've got: Prodrive's a private team [running Subaru]; Malcolm Wilson's a private team, running Fords; The Kronos team's running Citroen privately; you've got Mitsubishi run semi-privately by Rallyart now; you've got OMV running Peugeot; and so on.

"So we are now at a slightly different business model for the whole way a rally championship works. It will provide a far better stability in the long term, if the manufacturers work in the environment they're good at - in testing and developing the car, and then handing it over for the teams to operate in the field.

"A few minor things coming in the future will reinforce that - the cost-savings that are coming through are starting to make it affordable, and there are a number of ideas in the future that will help out even more."

BG: Well, if Sebastien Loeb wins the title again this year with a privateer, whereas last year he had a manufacturer team, then I guess the question is, what's the difference?

Richards: "There is no difference. I think we've got this myth that somehow a manufacturer team is something special. What it has been, historically, is the amount of money they've had available to them, and so the challenge for the regulators of the sport is to minimise the influence finance has on success.

"Of course you will never address it completely, I'm not deluding myself to think that's the case. But in WRC it's also going the same way as Formula One: we'll have one-make tyre in the near future, in line with Formula One; we'll have more regulations that take away the advantage of a significant budget.

"And that makes it more appealing to participate in, it makes it more unpredictable in terms of the number of people who can win, gives a lot more opportunity for youngsters to come into the sport and succeed, and in general makes it more appealing for the audience."

BG: You said you were going to get more involved in the Subaru team in the near future. Certainly the team has been going through a transition period for the last few months

Richards: "There are some issues, which I'm very well aware of, that were reflected in the last 12 months. But those things will change next year, and I will be more heavily involved as well in the operation of the team. Not that this will necessarily make a difference in itself, but we understand what we have to do to sort these things out, and I'm confident we will achieve it."

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