I smell a rat
However, in this particular case, I smell a rat.
Ansan could, I think, be reasonably put down to the inability to manage the race from half a world away and not paying heed to the people in the know they had available to them. (e.g. David Clare, who has gone on to be COO of A1GP – which has managed to stage six races in Asia in only two years, including three events in China) However, Zhuhai seems to have the hallmarks of outside influence.
The promoter of the Zhuhai race is France Corbeil of Sino Sports & Entertainment, Inc., the company that controls the Event and TV Rights for all of China. For no publicly known reason of which I am aware, the original financial backers of the race withdrew their support after paying partial consideration to Champ Car. Monsieur Corbeil was then left to get a new group of investors to underwrite his costs. Once done and paid, a delay then resulted in failure to complete the contractual paperwork with the new group in a timely manner, and the original May race date became doubtful. At this time a change to October was requested, although whether this request was initiated by Champ Car on its own or by Champ Car on behalf of the promoter is not fully clear to me. The original group of investors have filed suit to collect their original payment to Champ Car, who has retained the sum pending completion of the contract with the promoter's new investors.
However, what has not been widely reported is that France Corbeil and Sino Sports & Entertainment are business partners with Bernard Ecclestone. In 2003, they signed a deal to exploit Formula One's unassigned television rights in Asia, and entered into a sponsorship deal with British American Tobacco (then owners of BAR-Honda) to promote F1 in Asian markets where BAT brands were popular. Remember when BAR's equipment was impounded? That was France Corbeil's doing, via another production company.
The really confusing part for me is that we are expected to believe that a business partner of Bernie Ecclestone's failed to anticipate the potential for a conflict with the Chinese Grand Prix when requesting a schedule change for Zhuhai. And are the identities of the new group of backers known? Granted, it's all highly speculative, and the mere fact that Champ Car shares a promoter with Formula One is not entirely odd in the insular world of motor racing. In fact this somewhat mirrors the situation in Montreal with Norman Legault.
But I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn one of the new Zhuhai backers has an office in Knightsbridge. The cost of securing the rights to a Champ Car race is pocket change to a man of Bernard's means. Might he consider this an investment to protect the Chinese GP and/or his new GP2 Asian series from competition?
And as someone who has always believed Bernie had a silent role in the US open wheel Split, perhaps I'm just crying wolf. But as I said, I smell a rat. And it has a bad haircut.
Some information was obtained from reading these stories at grandprix.com
http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns19230.html
http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns11280.html
Matthew Snyder
Redondo Beach, CA