The Campos Meta 1 Formula One team will change it's name before the start of the 2010 season after Jose Ramon Carabante's buyout of the Spanish squad, with the team set to be known as 'Hispania Racing F1 Team' for the new season.
With Carabante's buyout sidelining former owner Adrian Campos, a name change for the team was always likely, and the new moniker is said to be named after Carabante's company Grupo Hispania.
According to a report in the Diario AS newspaper in Spain, the team will formally announce their rebranding at a media event in Murcia on Thursday.
The report suggests that this event will also see the team's 2010 Dallara-designed challenger finally revealed, and might also see their driver line-up, now reported to be Bruno Senna and Indian driver Karun Chandhok, officially unveiled.
Carabante's buyout saw Campos replaced as team principal by former Force India boss Colin Kolles.
The team is also set to sign former USF1 driver Jose Maria Lopez as their reserve driver, in a move which would be another nail in the coffin for the increasingly redundant American team, now all-but certain to skip the 2010 season.
Lopez and his management team have been working on a deal with Campos for some time, but while it was initially reported that the Argentine was in line for a race seat, he now looks likely to be confirmed as a reserve driver, with one report claiming that the deal could involve some Friday practice session work.
"There are a lot of chances that he will be a reserve at Campos," Victor Rosso, part of the management team, explained, "At this moment Felipe McGough [Lopez's manager] is finalising the details to release him from the contract with US F1 and to get his money back. It all depends on the termination of the contract.
"We made it clear to the Americans that he should not be treated like another businessman, but rather like a person that got the money thanks to a lot of effort and that this is the last chance he will have to race in Formula 1."
Lopez is reported to be looking to recover an $830,000 advance paid to the USF1 team.
McGough himself was highly critical of the USF1 co-founders Peter Windsor and Ken Anderson, suggesting that Anderson in particular had "deceived the FIA".
"Ken Anderson and Peter Windsor will travel to Argentina in the coming days to give all the explanations about everything that happened, since the sole responsibility is theirs," McGough ranted.
"The main culprit is Ken Anderson. They deceived the FIA, FOTA, FOM and the Concorde Agreement. The scandal in Argentina is miniscule compared to what is happening in Formula One with respect to this issue."
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
