The word on the grapevine in Formula 1 circles is that a group of investors is trying to bring the Brabham name back to Grand Prix racing - with the goal being to buy Force India and then use the Silverstone-based team to build a Brabham supercar company, following similar lines to the McLaren business model, with the road cars costing around $1 million each and the racing team advertising the production cars.
Brabham was one of Formula 1's most iconic brands from the 1960s until the early 1990s, when thenteam closed down because of lack of funding.
The story began in 1962 when Jack Brabham set up his own F1 team. He would become the only man to ever win the World Championship in a car if his own construction in 1966 and the team won a second title the following year with Denny Hulme. The Brabham team competed in just under 400 Grands Prix and won 35 races with Nelson Piquet adding two further World Championships in 1981 and 1983. The team won only two Constructors' titles in the dominant 1966-1967 period.
Sir Jack's youngest son David Brabham, who was an F1 racer in the early 1990s and won Le Mans with Peugeot in 2009. His other successes included the Bathurst 1000, which he won with his brother Geoff in 1997 and two American Le Mans Series titles in 2009 and 2010. For some years David has been working to properly protect the Brabham name, winning an important court battle at the start of 2013 to cancel trademarks in the European Union. The Brabham trademark has now reverted to family ownership.
"Brabham is a brand with over 69 years of racing heritage and it is our intention to see the name back on track," David Brabham says. "Since Project Brabham was launched, we have received a lot of enquiries from different parties who have expressed an interest in licensing the name and we are evaluating a number of options. We have no further comment."
It is not clear whether the family is actively involved in the project with Force India, but the word is that the funding for the programme is coming from the United States. Having said that, there are at least three or four other potential bidders for the team.
The arrival of Liberty Media and the listing of Formula One on the NASDAQ exchange has meant that there is a great deal more interest in the sport in the US investment community, with many investors believing that the sport will now head towards a franchise model. That is not going to happen overnight, but the likely changes along the way will mean that owning an F1 team should become a much more profitable business in the long-term, particularly if the team is being used to promote another product. There is believed to be a Canadian group involved and there may also be interest from Russian chemical industry billionaire Dmitry Mazepin.
The team owners are hoping to get between $260 million and $350 million for Force India. They are unlikely to get that, but there may be bidders willing to pay a little over the odds to secure the team. Force India current runs with a budget of around $135 million a year. About 60 percent of this comes from the Formula One group, the rest is made up of funding from sponsors who support Sergio Perez, from Diageo and from the Austrian water company BWT and from other small sponsors, such as Hype.
Source: JSNL
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