Dallara extends Campos deadline to Wednesday
February 7, 2010 by vmr
Filed under Prime & Option
In news from Spain, Italian chassis-maker Dallara has, apparently, extended its payment deadline for much-maligned and possibly floundering new team Campos Meta. Spanish sports paper AS has reported that the Spanish team will have until Wednesday, instead of Monday, to pay the 4 million euros it owes to Dallara for their 2010 car (the article in its original Spanish is available here).
As was previously discussed here at F1B, team owner Adrian Campos was quoted Friday as saying that the team was not yet ready for Bahrain and that they have money issues with Dallara,
Campos also noted that “sometimes we pay the [instalment of] 7m Euros to Dallara and sometimes we don’t have the money.” The economy is tight for everyone, particularly racing teams without long-standing F1 sponsor support and attempting to enter the pinnacle of open-wheel motorsport. However, it does strike one (me, actually) as more than a little concerning that the team who has only signed one rookie driver, albeit one with the very famous name of Bruno Senna, and has admitted serious financial woes will turn around it’s fortune in one weekend.
While the AS article does not have any comment from Campos, it cites sources from Dallara (who give the 4 million euros owed figure) and quotes Royal Spanish Automobile Federation President Carlos Gracia as saying that “Dallara are great professionals who know the path of Adrian and the difficulties of a project like this, so I’m sure they will do everything possible to find a solution that satisfies both parties.”
This extended deadline may be what Campos meant when he said that the team and Dallara would have things worked out by Monday, though other than finally signing another driver who magically comes with four-million-plus euros of personal sponsorship between now and Wednesday, it seems as though the only hope for Campos and his team to work things out with Dallara would be to continuously extend the financial deadline. That sort of agreement won’t last forever, and eventually the bad luck will stack up against Campos enough so that they will either have found the money or won’t last the season. It’s a shame that, at this point, the latter looks like the more likely option.
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That the payment deadlines are going public lends this some seriousness. But how many of these deadlines (or extensions of same) have come and gone between Campos and Dallara? To hear Campos talk, quite a few. It probably depends whether this is some balloon payment or something serious, or Dallara has in fact threatened to declare them in default and sell the chassis off (one thought on those lines, though….if Stefan really bought Toyota F1’s assets, then don’t they already have a chassis, and this would be just about spite?).
Added tangential thought: did Toyota know about the accelerator/brake/light issues with their mass-market cars when they were taking the steps to drop F1 late last year? That would give the whole process, then-viewed as cash savings in a recession, a different look. Maybe they thought they’d need every dime they could scrounge to see if they can ride out their coming troubles….
Those are great points. To be honest, I don’t think Dallara and Stefan GP are in talks to buy the chassis. Why bother? (at least for Stefan GP) I get the feeling that the 7 million euros Campos spoke about was the total payment owed (or still owed) and that they’ve, from time to time, been unable to meet the smaller payments on time.
What that suggests to me is that Dallara has been lenient and is becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of payment and may or will soon or has recently filed the paperwork to declare Campos in default. Wish I had access to and had better reading skills to decipher the Spanish and Italian legal websites and find out if such paperwork has been filed.
I certainly hope your Toyota theory is wrong, as if it’s correct, that would make the company extremely liable and horribly negligent in not publicly announcing their issues beforehand.