MOTORSPORT: F1's new ice age, WRC broke

Kimi Raikkonen returns to F1 while the commercial rights holder to the World Rally Championship is in receivership just days after its chief was arrested in Britain

Midweek motorsport report
November 30, 2011

Kimi's back with Lotus!
In Formula One, 2007 world champion Kimi Raikkonen – always a mystery man – has signed a two-year contract with Lotus Renault after two years in the WRC and weeks of speculation that he was headed for Williams, which is trying to resurrect itself after the worst season in its history.

Williams founder Sir Frank Williams had reportedly spent a month in Qatar chasing sponsorship to hire 32-year-old Raikkonen, a winner of 18 grands prix for McLaren and Ferrari.

A year after he won the world title for Ferrari, the Italian team paid out the final year of his contract there to make way for Spain's 2005-06 world champion Fernando Alonso.

A man of notoriously few words, Raikkonen said in the announcement overnight that his "hunger for F1 has recently become overwhelming".

"I'm looking forward to playing an important role in pushing the team [Lotus Renault, fifth in this year's constructors' world championship] to the very front of the grid," he said.

Gerard Lopez, head of the team's major shareholder, European investment company Genii Capital, said that signing Raikkonen: "is the first step of several announcements which should turn us into an even more serious contender".

It also further clouds the future of Polish driver Robert Kubica, rated by some experts the driver of the 2010 season for Renault but sidelined all of this year by injuries from a rally crash pre-season.

It also complicates things for Russian Vitaly Petrov and Brazilian Bruno Senna, the team's drivers at the end of the season just completed.

However, Raikkonen's decision to join the team that once was a Renault factory effort but is now heavily supported by Malaysian Proton-owned, British sportscar company, Lotus -- with investment from Genii -- may help 39-year-old Rubens Barrichello retain his seat at Williams.

Australian Daniel Ricciardo - backed by Red Bull, who placed him in small Spanish team HRT for 11 GPs this year – is now being linked in European reports to Team Caterham.

That outfit, owned by Malaysian aviation entrepreneur Tony Fernandes, ran this year as Team Lotus.

Autosport.com has reported that Fernandes had talks about Ricciardo with Red Bull motorsport supremo Dr Helmut Marko and Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner at the weekend's Brazilian GP.

Any move to Caterham appears likely to be at the expense of Italian veteran Jarno Trulli, even though he has a contract for next year.

Red Bull may be trying to find seats with satellite teams for Ricciardo and French rookie Jean-Eric Vergne if it retains Swiss driver Sebastien Buemi and Spaniard Jaime Alguersuari in the smaller of the two teams it owns, Scuderia Toro Rosso.

"Daniel has done a good job in the races he has had, so we will need to look at the opportunities and options that are available," Horner said.

"He has learned in the races he has done, although obviously it is in difficult circumstances in a car that is a long way off the pace.

"But he has still been learning, he has been up against a competitive teammate [Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi] and he has acquitted himself well, so it will be nice to see him in a GP team next year."

'WRC' receivers will look for new buyer to WRC TV rights
International rallying is in turmoil today after news that the company holding the TV rights to the world championship has gone into receivership, while "Iceman" Kimi Raikkonen's return to Formula One has been confirmed – but with Lotus Renault rather than Williams.

The receivership at World Rally Championship rights holder Convers Sports Initiatives follows the arrest in London last week of the company's principal, 36-year-old Russian businessman Vladimir Antonov.

Antonov was detained as part of an investigation into the stripping of assets from Bankas Snoras, a Lithuanian bank of which he was the majority owner. He and his partner Raimondas Baranauskas have been conditionally bailed by a London magistrate.

Motorsport's world governing body, the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), said it was "monitoring the situation regarding Mr Antonov".

The FIA awarded Britain's North One Sports a 10-year deal for exclusive media rights to the WRC from 2010 to 2020, but that contract passed to CSI when the company acquired North One in March.

Accountants UHY Hacker Young have been appointed CSI's receivers, with the firm's Peter Kubik and Andrew Andronikou as joint administrators.

"CSI own a number of sports teams, media franchises and entertainment rights businesses. We were appointed as administrators after uncertainty arose over the future of CSI," Kubik said.

"CSI has a number of sports-related assets and we are very confident of finding interested buyers for these subsidiaries.

"Our aim is to ensure that the sale process is as smooth as it possibly can be. We will now be undertaking a period of due diligence at CSI and once that has been completed we will be in a better position to answer questions."

Meanwhile, French rally driver Sebastien Ogier, a five-time winner in the WRC this year, will drive a Super 2000 Skoda Fabia next season while also developing Volkswagen's Polo for 2013.

Ogier's big switch to VW was announced last week after he was released from his contract as Citroen's eight-time world champion Sebastien Loeb's teammate – and was seemingly headed for Ford in a swap with this year's championship runner-up and Rally Australia winner, Finn Mikko Hirvonen.

Ogier said this week that, depending on the success of the VW testing program, the Polo may make its debut late next season.

"The test work will help me follow the Polo's development from A to Z," he said.

"I'm not ruling out the possibility of competing in the Polo towards the end of the year if the team believes we are sufficiently ready."


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