The Weekly Grapevine

Why Prodrive will be on the F1 grid in 2008

That David Richards seems headed for Formula One in his own right is no surprise - the London-born, Welsh-educated entrepreneur has long aspired to run a Prodrive-owned F1 operation, and, in fact, has often suggested that entering the sport's premier division in his own right is very much unfinished business.

Stubble-bearded Richards had, of course, two prior runs as a Formula One team boss, so he should know more than a bit about taking on Ferrari and McLaren in the world's most glamorous shark tank.

In mid-September 1997 he replaced Flavio Briatore at Benetton, only to depart the team 12 months later after failing to persuade the owning family to sell a shareholding to Ford in return for guaranteed engine supplies. Then, in 2002, he famously took over the running of BAR-Honda after a putsch resulted in the departure of founding team principal Craig Pollock.

In the first instance Richards was an employee - a highly remunerated employee, true, but still beholden to the Benetton family - while in the second he secured for Prodrive an overall management contract to run the operation as he saw fit on behalf of majority owner BAT, for whose 555 cigarette brand he had previously delivered two drivers' World Rally Championship titles (Colin McRae, 1995; Richard Burns, 2001) and three consecutive manufacturers' championships (1995-7) with Prodrive-engineered 555 Subaru Imprezas.

He was thus very much a BAT ally, and when Honda acquired a 45% stake in BAR at the end of 2004 - ahead of a full buyout a year later - it was clear Richards' days as team principal of the Lucky Strike-sponsored outfit were numbered despite BAR-Honda taking runners-up slot in the 2004 constructors' championship and Jenson Button placing best non-Ferrari driver in his league.

Richards first fell in love with motorsport while spectating on RAC rallies as a teenager in the Welsh forests. In 1969, aged 16, he took up co-driving; in 1981 he guided Ari Vatanen to the world title in a Rothmans-sponsored Ford Escort. It was the start of a long relationship with tobacco brand - which came under the BAT umbrella in 1998 - and saw Richards coordinate Rothmans' early 1980s Formula One (with March) and sportscar racing (Porsche) marketing activities via his David Richards Autosport marketing consultancy.

In 1984 he formed Prodrive out of DRA to run Porsche 911s for Rothmans in European, Middle Eastern and Irish rally championships. The presentation and success of the team belied the humble base from which Richards operated: a former bomb bunker on the periphery of Silverstone, in which the first piece of hardware was a wooden workbench salvaged from a bonfire after an F3 team discarded it.

Such was Prodrive's growth that within two years it relocated to a parcel of land in Banbury alongside the M40 motorway, one sufficiently large to house heliports and aircraft hangars. Such were DR's ambitions.

BMW race and rally deals followed before Richards wooed Subaru's Ryuichiro Kuze, director responsible for motorsport through Subaru's Tecnica International (STI), established in 1988 in the wake of the company's abortive attempt at Formula One via rebadged Motori Moderni Flat 12 engines fitted into the back of underfunded Colonis. So pathetic was the combination's performance that most F1 resources contain no reference to the effort.

Kuze, a passionate motorsport fan, realized Subaru desperately needed an international platform to display its unique wares - front-mounted turbo-charged flat-four engines; all-wheel drive at a time when it was a production car novelty - and responded to Richards' request for a meeting. A deal, which resulted in six world rally titles in 15 years, was struck in less than 15 days!

Subaru's rally successes, initially achieved via the rather bulky Legacy before the tighter Impreza provided a vastly wieldier package, were in no small part attributed to Richards' legendary attention to detail and presentation, and rapidly rebuilt Subaru's battered image.

In fact, so robust is Prodrive's Subaru relationship that Petter Solberg claimed his 2003 WRC title exactly midway through Richards' BAR-Honda sojourn, and a year ahead of the Formula One team's most sparkling season. In fact, last year, Solberg won three WRC events with what is fundamentally a fifteen-year old vehicle based upon mechanicals designed over two decades ago.

While six World Rally Championships count as Prodrive's major motorsport achievements to date, merely glossing over its successes in other disciplines is to do the company a grave disservice.

Since the late eighties, Prodrive has engineered race- and championship-winning touring car teams for Alfa Romeo, BMW, Ford, Honda and Volvo, all while developing Ferrari's Maranello 550 for the GTS class in world sportscar racing and running three Ford Falcons in Australia's Supercar V8 series.

Last year, Prodrive took class wins in the FIA GT Championship with Aston Martin's DBR9, and, in fact, bills itself as "the world's largest and most successful motorsport business" while pointing to its over 200 international race and rally with justifiable pride.

Prodrive's Automotive Technology Division, which provides "strategic consulting; design, development and testing of automotive technologies; promotion of technology and brands through motorsport; and the marketing that brings these programmes to life", is responsible for approximately half the company's GBP100m+ annual turnover. The division operates joint ventures with motor and component manufacturers in UK, Germany, the US (Detroit and California), Thailand and Australia, and acquired Tickford Engineering along the way.

Warwick test track © Prodrive

A state-of-the-art 250-acre test facility, incorporating a four-kilometre circuit, is situated near Birmingham International Airport and provides employment for over a tenth of Prodrive's total headcount of 1,000 employees worldwide.

A new 1,600 square metre composites facility situated in Milton Keynes incorporates autoclaves and oven more than capable of delivering a full range of F1 carbon fibre components, including tubs, whilst Banbury offers the UK's only certified independent fuels and lubricants test laboratory.

In 1999, immediately after his departure from Benetton, Richards sold 49.9% of Prodrive to Apax Partners, a venture capital group, using part (some say GBP15m) of the resultant GBP50m proceeds to purchase International Sportsworld Communicators, commercial rights' holder to the World Rally Championship, from Bernie Ecclestone.

An impressive company profile, Prodrive's, and one liberally sprinkled with success and achievements. Why, then, risk it all in Formula One, which, after all, bankrupted Tom Walkinshaw's similarly structured and successful TWR Group?

Simply because a whole raft of changes, both internal and external, have, and continue to, impact upon Prodrive's motorsport and consultancy activities.

First, there is no talk of an imminent successor to Impreza, an aging design drawing on peculiar design philosophies that affect weight distribution and aesthetics. Subaru, despite being mass producers of forced induction engines, have yet to produce and equip their vehicles with the darling of new vehicle purchasers - diesel engines - and are investing heavily in this compression-ignition technology to the detriment of forced-induction petrol engines.

Then, Kuze, Prodrive's strongest ally within Subaru, died a year ago this week, and while no successful programme or corporate relationship relies totally upon one man, his passing will have affected Prodrive's status within a company increasingly coming under General Motors' overall control.

Coincidentally, the WRC is, following the withdrawals of Peugeot, Skoda and Mitsubishi and a sabbatical taken by Citroen, down to the lowest level of 'works' participation since its inception in 1979.

With Ford presently walking the series - the Blue Oval is looking at three-in-a-row in Mexico next weekend - while Subaru and Solberg are point-less after the opening two events, how much longer will Subaru tolerate privateers regularly beating their entries? Particularly as the team has acquired no title sponsorship since the structured withdrawal of 555 two years ago, and Subaru is funding the shortfall.

True, Prodrive has the Aston project, but, again, the cars are class, not overall, contenders - tellingly, Audi's diesels are - and even this programme is hamstrung by no visible means of external funding. No paragraph describes quite as vividly the fall off in Prodrive recent motorsport performance as does a quick perusal of Prodrive's 2001-2005 achievements page on its own website:

2005
Le Mans 24 hours - 3rd (GTS Class)

2004
FIA World Rally Championship (D) - 2nd
FIA World Rally Championship (M) - 3rd
Le Mans 24 hours - 3rd (GTS Class)

2003
Le Mans 24 Hours - 1st (GTS Class)
FIA World Rally Championship (M) - 3rd
FIA World Rally Championship (D) - 1st
SCCA ProRally Championship (M) - 2nd
SCCA ProRally Championship (D) - 5th
American Le Mans Series (GTS Class) (M) - 2nd
American Le Mans Series (GTS Class) (D) - 3rd
Australian V8 Supercar Championship (D) - 5th

2002
FIA World Rally Championship (M) - 3rd
FIA World Rally Championship (D) - 2nd
FIA European Touring Car Championship (M) - 3rd
FIA European Touring Car Championship (D) - 5th
SCCA ProRally Championship (D) - 3rd
SCCA ProRally Championship (M) - 2nd

2001
FIA World Rally Championship (M) - 4th
FIA World Rally Championship (D) - 1st
SCCA ProRally Championship (M) - 1st
SCCA ProRally Championship (D) - 1st

Clearly Prodrive needs a reinvention, and what better way of achieving it than aiming for the very top? Fortunately for the 1981 world champion co-driver, awarded a CBE for his services to motorsport in the 2005 New Year Honours List, FIA President Max Mosley is creating just such openings for entrepreneurial types through his vision for Formula One's future, which, he staunchly believes, depends upon independents and not manufacturers.

David Richards at the 2004 German Grand Prix © LAT

Having had two brushes with F1 employment - both of which ended in exits, allegedly over manufacturer-related matters - Richards is no doubt adamant that a return to Bernieland be on his terms.

And, his company has a real need to do just that. ATD requires a showcase for its technology, which includes hi-tech transmission, catalytic converters, vehicle electronics, said zero-lag turbos, type approval procedures (ATD gained Dodge Viper certification, and converts vehicles for Europe), leaning city cars and front-drive traction systems and such-like.

Prodrive has already taken a step in that direction: recently the company unveiled its production-ready P2 sports car prototype - based upon Impreza mechanicals - and clearly a Formula One effort would provide an even better halo for ATD.

So, a fully-fledged R&D division equal to the best in the industry, access to cash via a partnering venture capitalist company, rapid prototyping shops and CAD/CAM systems aplenty, a winning company ethic motivated by success, and a 1,000-strong team of employees in five international locations. Compare the foregoing to Midland, to Red Bull Racing, to Toro Rosso, even Williams, and, of Concorde's present signatories, only Ferrari is in the same league.

What more could an 'independent' hope for?

Answer: a competitive race engine, plus a pile of sponsorship - both areas in which Prodrive is presently lacking. However, Prodrive has wide-ranging, motorsport-driven manufacturer contacts; of equal importance are the 50 dynamometers, including transient installations and a bank equipped with the latest gas analysis equipment for the measurement and calibration of emissions from gasoline, diesel, LPG and natural gas engines. Ponder, for just a moment, Mosley's proposed post-2010 engine regulations, which permit alternative fuels...

All of which leaves sponsorship (lack of) as the only remaining bugbear. If Prodrive is in any way critical of its shortcomings, and evidence suggests it is, action plans are already in place to address this crucial area. Forget not, though, that Apax Partners hold investments in the Tech and Telecom, Retail and Consumer, Media, Healthcare and Financial Services sectors - names such as Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger are controlled by Apax - so synergies are not hard to find.

Why, then, did they not partner Prodrive in rallying? Some did - Inmarsat sponsored the WRC - but Hilfiger logos on a muddy Impreza; Klein's badge of honour on a mucky Subaru; Waterstone's guests in dusty Mexico or being devoured by Finnish mosquitoes?

Formula One, though, has glitz and glamour of a kind never peddled by rallying, and Richards, of all people, knows just that, and exactly how to reposition his company. Finally, should a split, as seems inevitable, truly happen, Prodrive will prove to be one of the best resourced teams in the business; one, though, driven to market its own technology, and not cans of doctored water or Russian steel.

A 2008 entry into Formula One by Prodrive is not only probable; it is highly likely. A year or two ago Richards and Mosley disagreed over the direction taken by the WRC - and, frankly, Richards, seemed slightly bruised by the experience - but of late DR has sung Mosley's praises, whilst MM has consistently held Richards up as the sort of independent businessman post-2007 F1 desperately needs to attract if F1 is to maintain its popularity.

With a ringing endorsement like that, it is fair bet that Richards has taken the decision to spend the next two years building up Prodrive F1. The timing could hardly be better, and this world champion co-driver, who counted split seconds on the slipperiest of roads, surely knows that.