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Just imagine you are Max Mosley. You have before you the entries for the 2008 Formula One World Championship. Bernie Ecclestone says he wants 12 teams. The current 11 have all entered and one slot is left. There's an entry from Paul Stoddart under Minardi European F1 Team and there's one from a new outfit, Saddam Hussein's International Team (S.H.I.T for short). Which one to take?
There's a little rider that went along with the entry form. It provides that all entries are accepted at the sole discretion of the FIA. Which might just be a problem for Stoddart.
If you thought that Stoddy had sold Minardi to Dietrich Mateschitz, I'm sorry, so did I, but apparently he sold Red Bull the PS05s and the Faenza factory while retaining the naming rights to Minardi and the 2004-spec PS04Bs. In terms of continuing to own what you appear to have sold, Stoddy has obviously learned from the commercial rights holder!
When Stoddart walked out of the Shanghai paddock last October he did so with a heavy heart, he said. Would he be back? Never say never. The more cynically minded pointed out he had heavy pockets as well, stuffed full of Mateschitz's dough. Good business, they reckoned. And now he was off to concentrate on OzJet as it tried to carve a niche in the market with cut-price business flights between Sydney and Melbourne.
