Sunday, May 4, 2008

Super Aguri’s lifeline?

While the Super Aguri F1 team struggles mightily to retain its position on the grid, with Big Brother Honda having anteed-up $2.0m Euros in order for the Super Best Friends outing at the Spanish Grand Prix, there is now apparently some talks going on with a previously spurned bidder.

Franz Joseph Weigl, a former “Scooter” racing pilot, whose Weigl Group AG provides mechanical parts to several major auto manufacturer’s, has reportedly offered to throw Aguri Suzuki a lifeline, by offering to fork over $6.5m to keep the little team afloat and thus, this will hopefully allow Honda to save face and keep Takuma Sato racing for the foreseeable future.

While it’s not believed that Weigl has the necessary funding to obtain the team outright, the move to transfer a major shareholding of the Honda “B-Team” is seen as a way to keep Super Aguri racing while other bidders or sponsorship is sought.

Now the hard part will be getting the team’s race cars to Istanbul, as everybody else has already taken the safer route via ferryboat, instead of running the gauntlet between either the Balkans or Southern Italy which are prone to truck hijackings.

Good Luck Super Best Friends, hope to see you on the telescreen next week…