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CART
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IRL
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NHRA
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| Wednesday, January 24 |
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| Australian businessman looks to buy team Reuters | |||
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LONDON -- Australian businessman Paul
Stoddart hopes to buy Minardi but the struggling Italian Formula
One team said on Wednesday an announcement on its future would
not be made this week.
"Gian Carlo Minardi confirmed that negotiations are underway
to secure the future of the team he founded in 1979, but ... no
formal announcement on the subject will be made this week,"
Minardi said in a statement.
"He stressed that stories purporting to reveal the purchase
price of the team, as well as other details of its future
arrangements, are completely inaccurate because no contract has
yet been concluded."
The team, still to announce an engine supplier or drivers,
had said little publicly about its future other than promising
to be on the grid for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix
on March 4.
Stoddart, owner of the British-based European Aviation
company, is an avid grand prix fan and has a collection of some
40 old Formula One cars which he still races.
He confirmed his interest in Minardi in the past week,
describing himself Minardi's last chance.
Stoddart was quoted on the Formula One website of British
broadcaster ITV as saying the deal emerged at
Christmas and he had not slept well for weeks.
"We've got 29 days until the freight leaves for Melbourne
and I think we can make that," he was quoted as saying.
"I'll use one of my own planes to take the team if necessary
but I don't think it will come to that. We will be there.
"But it's going to be an enormous task and we're going to
have to move mountains.
"There's a saying: 'The impossible takes a while but
miracles take a little longer'. Doing this deal and getting to
Melbourne is somewhere between the two."
Hopeful European Aviation could say only that Stoddart was "away at the moment" and gave no details about his whereabouts. The British weekly Motoring News on Wednesday quoted him as saying that he was very hopeful of a deal. "I missed out on buying Tyrrell in 1997 but I hope I won't miss out this time," he said. Stoddart tried to buy the now defunct Tyrrell before British American Racing took them over. Last season he sponsored the Arrows Formula One team and has also been involved with Jordan. If the deal goes through, Stoddart will become the first Australian team owner since triple champion Jack Brabham and Ron Tauranac sold their now-defunct team to current Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone in 1972. Stoddart's firm built Arrows' two-seater Formula One car at their base in Ledbury, on the Welsh borders, and he also runs a successful Formula 3000 team. Minardi is expected to name Spaniard Fernando Alonso, who is under contract to the team, as one of its drivers with Brazilian Enrique Bernoldi widely expected to take the other berth after missing out at Sauber and Prost. Spaniard Marc Gene and Argentine Gaston Mazzacane drove for Minardi in 2000 but both have left the team, the former to join Williams as test driver and the latter to Prost. Mazzacane was sponsored by the Miami-based television company Pan American Sports Network (PSN), which has linked up with Prost after last year backing out of a deal to buy a majority share in Minardi. Media reports have suggested that Minardi, which has scored just one point in five years, is unlikely to secure Renault-based Supertec engines this season but is expected to try to retain its old Ford ones. | |
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