With Caterham and Marussia failing to finish the 2014 season due to lack of funds, there was a lot of attention on the other teams finances towards the end of the 2014 season to see if there was a way for the sport to be easier to finance from the teams perspective.
The Force India team has gone through many guises before it’s current form, Jordan, Midland and Spyker, but are this current team now finding themselves in a financial crisis?
In 2013 team owner Vijay Mallya had announced he would inject more money into the team to improve it’s facilities in an attempt to move up the grid, this was looking to be a sign of intent from the billionaire who wanted to succeed with the team.
Despite this apparent investment Vijay Mallya has had a lot of financial troubles himself with the loss of Kingfisher Airlines with the company eventually going bust in October 2013, the banks sort to see Vijay as one of the ‘wilful debtors’ to this with bank loans of up $1.3billion, this will take a toll on any wealthy businessman.
Running Force India it seems is now be becoming a serious burden to the wealthy owner as well as co-owner Subrata Roy, who is currently in prison, for failing to pay debts to investors.
We all knew that the team was always run on a conservative budget but always punched above it’s weight, this is one of the great successes of the team and it has been great to watch season after season.
But in the latest twist to the Force India story, it appears in 2015 that not only the team has been unable to complete it’s VJM08 car in time for the first test in Jerez, but now also possibly for the final Barcelona test on February 26, rumours are now appearing they may not make the first race in Australia.
The team are currently battling suppliers of parts to the team which is slowly halting the production of the VJM08, this is due to lack of payments, but the car’s build is apparently in production.
With the team in such financial woe, it does beg the question on how much key sponsors like Smirnoff, Sahara and Sergio Perez’s Telmex run by Carlos Slim (Richest man in the world) are actually bringing to the table?
Reports are not clear at the moment but it appears Renault looking to cut ties with Red Bull & buy the Force India outfit to have a bigger presence in Formula One once more.
Time is clearly ticking for the Silverstone based team, but how much is left on the clock is another question altogether.
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