Rumors abound that StefanGP will buy ToyotaF1, gain 2010 grid entry

While Toyota has withdrawn from the 2010 Formula1 grid and Concorde Agreement, rumors abound that it is either selling its team or its technology to a previously failed 2010 entrant, Stefan GP.

Most convincingly, Joe Saward, F1 journalist, author, and former editor of the F1 magazine, wrote Friday on his personal blog that “I got a call at some point from a little bird in Cologne who told me that the staff of Toyota have been told that their entry has been sold on to someone else – and that some of them are going to be asked to stay on to build and run their car for a man called Stefan from Serbia.  Apparently the government down there is paying for ‘Stefan Grand Prix’ to become a reality.”

Meanwhile, Autosport spoke with Zoran Stefanovich, StefanGP team principal, who told that site that “There is no entry for them [Toyota in 2010].  We are in the process of evaluating our own plans for next year. We did some sort of agreement with them [Toyota], to take over the F1 project, but I cannot discuss the details at present.”  Corroborating that information is an article on SPEED.com, explaining that “a Toyota source has confirmed that the company has in effect surrendered its entry,” continuing, “a specialist in F1 team takeovers has also told us that the entry can only be transferred if someone buys the company that signed the Concorde, and which thus has the rights to the entry slot. The entry as such is not an asset that can be brokered around.”

These stories are quite contradictory, but all might  not be as it seems.  The FIA has been attempting to determine how Toyota can be punished for breaking its contract after signing the Concorde Agreement.  Toyota is, apparently, quite willing to sell the technology and various staff members will remain with that technology, if it has been bought by StefanGP.  The FIA could well decide that the sale of the technology and staff are enough to constitute a sale of the company and entry, thereby allowing StefanGP’s former Toyota entry onto the grid and leaving Peter Sauber’s team outside the paddock.

Of course, this is speculation, especially since StefanGP has generally seemed to have an unusual sense of entitlement to a grid entry, with a complaint to the EU over the apparent insistence by the FIA that all new 2010 entries use Cosworth engines.  The team has even released a statement suggesting that they are prepared to race in Bahrain, with “title sponsorship without even being accepted from FIA for the 2010 Championship…Success is very predictable. You need to know what is the nature of your business, and you need to sell your product. We have unique product, which we already sold, so it is predictable that we expect to be in F1.”

What will actually happen, and who will actually start on the grid in Bahrain, is a bit too difficult to determine right now.  This has been an extraordinary silly season, with unexpected driver contracts, withdrawals, and changed team sales, and it will likely only become more silly before it becomes less so.