Caterham F1 sale officially confirmed - MotorSportsTalk

Following a couple weeks of speculation, the sale of the Caterham F1 Team has been confirmed on Wednesday. The team’s base in Leafield and name of Caterham F1 Team will stay for what the team termed “the foreseeable future.”

Colin Kolles is back in the game and will head up the group of Swiss and Middle Eastern investors, taking over from Tony Fernandes and his partners at the top of the organization. According to veteran F1 scribe Adam Cooper, Kolles will be a Caterham consultant.

Kolles’ F1 history includes stints with the team now known as Force India, previously known as Jordan, Midland, MF1 and Spyker. He also was involved with the HRT team during its stint.

Additionally, former Minardi Formula One driver Christijan Albers and Manfredi Ravetto will take over day-to-day operations of the race team.

Said Albers in a statement, “We are aware of the huge challenge ahead of us given the fight at the bottom end of the Championship and our target now is to aim for tenth place in the 2014 Championship. We are very committed to the future of the team and we will ensure that the team has the necessary resources to develop and grow and achieve everything it is capable of.”

Albers and Kolles have been linked for several years both in F1 and in sports car racing. Albers drove for Spyker in 2007, when Kolles was the team principal. Once Kolles moved to Le Mans, the Dutchman raced an Audi R10 TDI in Le Mans.

Albers is also set to drive the Lotus P1/01 AER in the FIA World Endurance Championship for several races later this year (the Lotus is not affiliated with Caterham, because the Caterham/Lotus/Lotus history is already confusing enough as it is). Kolles had been involved in a Lotus LMP2 project last year.

Meanwhile, Cyril Abiteboul has left the team to pursue other opportunities.

No mention was made of changing the team’s driver lineup, with Kamui Kobayashi and Marcus Ericsson competing this year and a deep pipeline of test drivers that include Alexander Rossi, Rio Haryanto and Will Stevens, with the latter two scheduled to test in Silverstone next week.

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Media and fan attention focused on a controversial run-in between Haiden Deegan and his Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing teammate Jordon Smith during Round 10 of the Monster Energy Supercross race at Detroit, after which the 250 East points’ Hunter Lawrence defends the young rider in the postrace news conference.

Deegan took the early lead in Heat 1 of the round, but the mood swiftly changed when he became embroiled in a spirited battle with teammate Smith.

On Lap 3, Smith caught Deegan with a fast pass through the whoops. Smith briefly held the lead heading into a bowl turn but Deegan had the inside line and threw a block pass. In the next few turns, the action heated up until Smith eventually ran into the back of Deegan’s Yamaha and crashed.

One of the highlights of the battle seemed to include a moment when Deegan waited on Smith in order to throw a second block pass, adding fuel to the controversy.

After his initial crash, Smith fell to seventh on the next lap. He would crash twice more during the event, ultimately finishing four laps off the pace in 20th.

The topic was inevitably part of the postrace news conference.

“It was good racing; it was fun,” Deegan said at about the 27-minute mark in the video above. “I just had some fun doing it.”

Smith had more trouble in the Last Chance Qualifier. He stalled his bike in heavy traffic, worked his way into a battle for fourth with the checkers in sight, but crashed a few yards shy of the finish line and was credited with seventh. Smith earned zero points and fell to sixth in the standings.

Lawrence defends Deegan — *Jordon Smith failed to make the Detroit Supercross Main and fell to sixth in the points. – Feld Motor Sports*

“I think he’s like fifth in points,” Deegan said. “He’s a little out of it. Beside that it was good, I don’t know. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

Deegan jokingly deflected an earlier question with the response that he wasn’t paying attention during the incident.

“He’s my teammate, but he’s a veteran, he’s been in this sport for a while,” Deegan said. “I was up there just battling. I want to win as much as everybody else. It doesn’t matter if it’s a heat race or a main; I just want to win. I was just trying to push that.”

As Deegan and Smith battled, Jeremy Martin took the lead. Deegan finished second in the heat and backed up his performance with a solid third-place showing in the main, which was his second podium finish in a short six-race career. Deegan’s first podium was earned at Daytona, just two rounds ago.

But as Deegan struggled to find something meaningful to say, unsurprisingly for a 17-year-old rider who was not scheduled to run the full 250 schedule this year, it was the championship leader Lawrence who came to his defense.

“I just want to point something out, which kind of amazes me,” Lawrence said during the conference. “So many of the people on social media, where everyone puts their expertise in, are saying the racing back in the ’80s, the early 90s, when me were men. They’re always talking about how gnarly it was and then anytime a block pass or something happens now, everyone cries about it.

“That’s just a little bit interesting. Pick one. You want the gnarly block passes from 10 years ago and then you get it, everyone makes a big song and dance about it.”

Pressed further, Lawrence defended not only the pass but the decision-making process that gets employed lap after lap in a Supercross race.

“It’s easy to point the finger,” Lawrence said. “We’re out there making decisions in a split millisecond. People have all month to pay their phone bill and they still can’t do that on time.

“We’re making decisions at such a fast reaction [time with] adrenaline. … I’m not just saying it for me or Haiden. I speak for all the guys. No one is perfect and we’re under a microscope out there. The media is really quick to point a finger when someone makes a mistake.”

The media is required to hold athletes accountable for their actions. They are also required to tell the complete story.

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