Posted on January 09, 2009 by F1Wolf

Fry F1 ?

Yesterday Nick Fry revealed that there are about dozen seriously interested parties in taking over the Honda F1 Racing team to choose from. Many names have been mentioned before. The “most likely” candidates however ruled themselves out. Carlos Slim was apparently never even considering getting involved, David Richards may have been but is not any more.

The surprise party that Nick Fry forgot to mention is said to be … Nick Fry.
Maybe it is also news to him but The Daily telegraph reports that Nick Fry, not the Greek shipping tycoon Achilleas Kallakis (as Autosport suggests) is the front runner now.

I am not sure if this just another media made rumour or not. I would definitely prefer to see a person with racing background taking over the Honda F1 operation rather than another billionaire making F1 his latest expensive hobby. But would Nick Fry be the right person for the job ? He has been in charge of the team since 2005, under his rule the team got rid of all the sponsors and made it all the way from being the 2nd best team to the (almost) back of the grid, both probably factors that in some way lead to Honda’s pull out …

This is what Nick Fry has to say on what is going on:

“Right at the start of this process Bernie Ecclestone said that he was 100 percent confident that we’d be on the grid in Melbourne, and I have to say that I wasn’t quite so sure where his confidence came from. But as we’ve gone through this process, my confidence based on what we’ve seen has increased – maybe not to 100 percent, but it’s pretty close. And it has been very gratifying.”

When did he became so optimistic ? When 30+ subjects lined up in front of Honda’s door ? Or when he realized that Honda will still pour some 100 millions dollars into the team in 2009 season and perhaps sell all the assets for as little as a dollar or euro or pound ? At the end, if he believes that this indeed is “an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to get something which does have the opportunity to do very well in the next couple of years” why let others to take it …

By the way, can anyone imagine Fry F1 Team ?