As we reported almost two weeks ago, Caterham F1’s financial books look like a chapter from a Brothers Grimm book: absolutely frightening…so bad, in fact, that Caterham went into administration and had to skip the Texas Grand Prix race. But now administrator Finn O’Connell has taken a new approach to bring in the necessary money that is vital to the team’s barely-visible chance of returning to racing: crowd funding.
Launching a campaign on U.K. crowd funding site Crowdcube, Caterham hopes to raise £2,350,000 before the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, and as of writing, they had acquired over 1500 backers and over £527,000, which is fairly surprising for such a novel endeavor. Prizes for donation range from a “Refuel Caterham F1” badge to a carbon fiber brake disc, all the way up to your name on the car and the ultimate prize, a “hospitality treatment”…that last one will cost you £45,000, so we hope you have deep pockets.
There are six days left in the campaign, and they are 23% of the way to their goal. Will it happen? Give it a couple of days and let’s see what happens.
Yeah … that’ll save Caterham alright . $3.5 million buying all of one motor in F1 ! Not to mention $3.5 million being less than a tenth of what Caterham owes its vendors , suppliers and the man they supposedly bought the team from .
You betcha ! More like Hasta La Bye Bye Caterham … see y’all later .. and if its any consolation Gene Haas’s F1 team will never so much as approach the gate … never mind get into it or leave it .
Fact is .. F1 has priced itself into oblivion … with self implosion imminent .
Sigh … another one bites the dust … once again shooting itself in the foot
I spent some time thinking about what you have to say, and 3.5 million really isn’t much at all. Then I had a thought, what if Team Caterham was going to use that initial amount to invest in something? They could become the largest single “vendor” of Herbalife vendor. That would actually complete the picture too: debt, mismanagement, bankruptcy, dubious ownership and a pyramid scheme as the cherry on top.
If you’re going to fail, fail big.
“Vendor of Herbalife vendor”
A stupid grammatical error brought to you by the department of redundancy department.
Shame to see Caterham and also Marussia go under (Marussia is in the next town to me) but sadly F1 needs to wake up especially as there are have and have not teams. There are a few other teams in difficulty right now. Fortunately the team in my small town where I live are doing well. If Mercedes/Petronas fail there would be a lot of unemployment in my town.
Umm, let me say it like this. If you buy product from a team you ultimitly fund them. Do i support my joyfull cheers and ideas yes. But do i buy redbulls off the shelf so someone else can go get filmed so they can win at advertising and gathering critical data from all over the world from presumably every known extream bad ass sportsman . No. Do i hope for the under dig absalutly. Is there reason to fight like hell to keep going. I know i can type this debate out but one thing. But let me ask if you were enzo lost your dad and brother in war and now produce motars and are getting bombed the whole time. And you just want to race what would you do?