The skeletons of failed start-up series that HybridV10 must navigate

Conveniently, it's pretty much 25 years to the day that I picked up my first ever copy of Autosport - the 11 January edition from 2001. And by picked up, I mean 'lodged it furtively in my grandmother's shopping trolley while in Tesco in the hope that she'd ring it through at the checkout and not question it', as if it were indistinguishable from a box of Weetabix. As I'm sure many of our readers have concluded in the comments, I've barely accrued any additional intelligence in that time.

For pure nostalgic value, I figured I'd read it back and work through the prose of many now-familiar names (notably, including my current colleague Stuart Codling's stint in the American Le Mans Series). Beyond the reports from the categories that had eagerly opened for business in early January, the remaining contents came accompanied with a contingency-for-slow-news-week sheen: the Pit & Paddock section featured "Honda targets 2002 title challenge", "[Mike] Gascoyne plays down Benetton chances" (which he was right to do, given the way its 2001 season went), "Maranello avoids noise ban"....

There are still excellent features on the mind games played by championship winners, on Olivier Panis' return after a year out spent testing for McLaren, plus obituaries for Walter Hayes and John Cooper - two men who left an indelible mark on the Formula 1 (and wider motor racing) landscape in the 1950s and '60s. But something else caught this writer's eye; hidden behind the features and news, there was one little peculiarity ensconced beside the final-page flannel panel: an op-ed by Dominic Chappell, who operated as the frontman for a new series called the Interactive Sportscar Championship. I admittedly was not familiar with the series, but I'd certainly heard of Chappell.

As readers in the UK may remember, Chappell purchased the moribund BHS from Sir Philip Green's Arcadia Group in 2015 (for non-UK readers, BHS was a chain of department stores) for £1, a year before the business entered administration. The collapse of BHS, something of a British retail institution, caused over 10,000 job losses and a shortfall of £570m in the company's pensions fund. Green later plugged some of the hole with £363m of his own money, although courted controversy for many of the company's failings - including the eventual sale to Chappell, who had already been declared bankrupt three times before buying the brand.

As an addendum to the story, Chappell was sentenced to six years in jail with over £584,000 due in outstanding taxes. He served half of his term before he was released, and was later ordered to pay £50m to cover losses accrued by BHS during his ownership.

In a past life, Chappell had been a racing driver. The Briton had driven in two F3000 races in 1993, but had since primarily started to focus on his business interests - although still found time to race at the Le Mans 24 Hours across the next three years. Based on his experience in driving across different categories, it was in the realms of motorsport where Chappell had devised his plan for a new series.

Dominic Chappell was one third of Lister's #52 team at the 1995 Le Mans Series - 20 years before he sunk retail icon BHS

Photo by: Motorsport Images

Based on a GT racing platform, the Interactive Sportscar Championship (ISC) aimed to be a disruptor in the British motorsport industry and shake promoters out of their staidness with a compelling package of innovative TV coverage and experiences. It sounds archaic today, but the ISC made the claim that viewers would be able to watch TV feeds from, yes, at least eight different cars! In 2001's days of analog TV and five channels, this was unheard of; in today's world of streaming, it's a distinctly unimpressive feat. Such is progress.

Further in his 2001 column, Chappell added that the ISC was looking at developing a game for the yet-to-be-born series, including an element which allowed "online gamers to race in a virtual world against real drivers". While it felt futuristic, those tenets were all rooted in things that existed elsewhere; F1 Digital had honed the multi-camera channel set-up (although was guilty of being well ahead of its time), PC gaming had multiplayer gaming over LAN, and the original Xbox was in development with broadband functionality to bring that into the console market. Plus, one might argue Chappell's liberal use of the phrase "sex appeal" keeps the futurism grounded - has anyone in the past 20 years said "sex appeal" non-ironically?

The ISC lasted for just one race before going out of business. Held at Donington on 3 June 2001, the ISC entry list comprised of 20 cars, although just 12 turned up to the Leicestershire venue. Eight of the 12 cars finished the shortened 56-minute race (initially planned to run for 75 laps), three of them not even taking to the start. For a series that promised a turbocharged televisual spectacle, there was barely enough action to fill one TV feed; the interactive element was not due to arrive until a later race, effectively rendering the championship's inaugural race completely indistinguishable from any other sparsely populated GT event.

The ghosts of categories dead and still-born are perceptible when considering last week's soft unveiling of Anthony Hamilton's latest project

Chappell's series is just one of many thousands of racing championships to promise the world, fail to deliver, and disappear within a ruinous heap of debt. At around the same time as the ISC's barely watched opener, the Premier 1 Grand Prix series aimed to get off the ground with teams representing football clubs and offering a $125,000 payout for the winner of each race, and intended to begin in 2002. Although a calendar was defined, the series never truly got off the ground - the fleet of Judd-powered Reynards built for Premier 1 were never seen in the cold light of day.

The concept of running a fleet of single-make cars separated by team and livery underpinned A1GP and Superleague Formula; the former being a winter series that effectively served as motorsport's 'world cup', while Superleague Formula took the Premier 1 concept and did the same thing, but with a Panoz chassis based on ChampCar's final car. Both categories lasted for just four seasons, failing to make enough of a splash commercially to be profitable. A1GP's switch to a new "Powered by Ferrari" car for the 2008-09 season exacerbated the financial concerns, while Superleague's roster of interested football teams quickly dwindled, leaving many of the entrants notionally representing national teams.

And then there's the likes of Formula Acceleration 1, AutoGP, S5000, Formula European Masters, Grand Prix Masters, W Series... myriad categories have either failed to stick the landing, or have never been able to escape the runway in the first place.

Nico Hulkenberg won the A1GP title long before he got onto the radar of F1

Photo by: A1GP

The ghosts of categories dead and still-born are perceptible when considering last week's soft unveiling of Anthony Hamilton's latest project. Through social media posts and a press release, Hamilton (father of Lewis, if anyone's still unsure at this point) unveiled his plans for "HybridV10" - a two-tier racing series hinging on a naturally aspirated V10 powertrain fed by sustainable fuels, but promising its own governance, technical, and sporting infrastructure too.

We won't dive into every exhaustive aspect that HybridV10 aims to create, given that the information is already accessible by clicking here, but Hamilton's plan is to develop a fully independent series. This includes an independent stewards' board and governance system labelled the "Hybrid World Commission", or HWC, to administer the regulations and sporting requirements. HybridV10 also has to devise the technical regulations, promising simultaneous V10 and V8 championships, organise races, bring in commercial partners and manufacturers, negotiate TV deals, plot the acquisition and/or build of its centralised facilities, develop its online platforms, commission technical partners to produce parts for the new cars, build the cars, test the cars, develop its draft system for drivers, put logistics into place to fly and ship cars around the world...

...and it's set an earliest time of arrival in 2028 for the HybridV10 series to start racing.

HybridV10's outline presents a utopian approach to racing, one headlined by promises of a 'natural' and 'real' racing spectacle, soundtracked to a much-coveted banshee-wail of a V10 engine. While it assures the prospective audience that the racing purity is more than mere perception, it attempts to underpin that with a notion of education systems, merit-based driver decisions, governance systems which can be held to account by fans, plus an interactive experience for the viewer through various multimedia channels, plus festival-like addendums to each event. When reading the back page of that 25-year-old copy of Autosport, maybe a sense of familiarity oozed through that final point... but Hamilton, thankfully, is not Chappell. 

If every single aspect laid out in HybridV10's manifesto came to pass, it would be an incredible feat - but of course, it doesn't happen without truckloads of money. Using W Series as an example, which offered Formula Regional-level racing to female drivers for free (in a largely merit-based system), it had quickly become apparent that the outgoings - funding opportunities for higher in the ladder, free race seats, logistics, etc - had far exceeded the income from investment and sponsorship.

It's all very well selling a dream, one based on the projected future worth of investors and TV deals worth billions, but building on an ambition to run a top-level racing series is an incredibly high-risk plan. Myriad racing categories have come and gone, trumpeting grand ambitions to challenge Formula 1 on a global level but ultimately falling flat in a little-used corner of the cable TV universe. This comes as F1 continues upon its journey from 'largely niche spectacle' to 'cultural icon', one ignited by its media-mogul US ownership and fortune on Netflix's programming roulette wheel.

F1 TV's infrastructure has needed years of development - one of many aspects HybridV10 wants to bring in-house

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

How does HybridV10 even begin to challenge such a behemoth? Formula E, one of few start-up championships to defy the four-years-or-fewer lifespan, is now into its 12th season, yet remains unable to get within the same league as F1's current viewership.

Pardon my cynicism (and pardon the length of the prelude), but I - like many others - cannot visualise how this championship comes into being. How does one create an infrastructure of teams, engineers, manufacturers, logistics, drivers, designers, builders, tinkers, tailors, soldiers, and sailors so quickly? Who holds the pursestrings? How does this concept get beyond mere press release?

I want to see F1 face a legitimate challenge in the motorsport sphere; not one deleterious to both sides, but one where both championships can coexist and encourage each other to deliver an ever-improving race experience

I would happily tuck into my shoe* if, by 2029, HybridV10 is up and running with its own car and delivers all of the aims set out on its press release. I want to see F1 face a legitimate challenge in the motorsport sphere; not one deleterious to both sides, but one where both championships can coexist and encourage each other to deliver an ever-improving race experience. I want to see what a championship can do with a modern-day V10 package, perhaps with a KERS-like element to maintain some degree of hybridisation. And I'd like to see more opportunities for top-line drivers, those left by the wayside in their progression towards F1, and future engineers and technicians looking to make their first step into the world of motorsport.

Perhaps Formula E's Gen4 package, IndyCar's much-vaunted next generation, or the continued health of the WEC, can supply that. I don't see how HybridV10 gets off the ground - but equally, if I'm proven wrong, I would be more than delighted to chow down on a piece of footwear.

*Stipulations for shoe consumption. A) every element of the HybridV10 press release, dated 7 January 2026, must be delivered upon. B) Any HybridV10 race, featuring all elements laid out by the championship stated by a), must be completed by 31 December 2029. C) The author reserves the right to select the shoe, seasonings, and condiments. D) The author must be alive to consume the shoe.

If Hamilton gets HybridV10 off the ground, it'll be an incredible feat

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images