Need F1 swag for you or someone in your life for Christmas? Great news! Use my affiliate in the description and the code F1BFRIDAY at checkout for 35% off Site wide! *Exclusions Apply Also arrows got four podiums before Boutsen. Kekw.
With T-Minus, Rich Energy, Andrea Moda, you could almost do your own SlapShoes "crooks liars and thieves" list vid. Because I know how much you love a list :D
Completely unrelated, in MotoGP and Moto2 about 10 years ago, Mika Kallio always ran with the number -36 on his bike (tho registered as just 36 officially). No sketchy sponsors are the reason, he just does it because he is Finnish and loves riding on ice
When this was going on, my line manager was the brother of Arrows' head of legal - who was being kept very busy. Don't remember any gossip but at work we did have one of the prototype Carbon fibre coasters (to put under hot drink mugs). Arrows had apparently agreed to spend a few thousand on them as corporate gifts. They made a prototype batch of 10 but found that due to cost of Carbon fibre, they'd spent the entire budget.
In other words Tom Walkinshaw got scammed lol. Prince Malik did an interview with F1 Racing magazine at the start of 1999 which was entertaining to read. He was bigging himself up as the first black team manager in F1.
I remember reading an article in F1 Racing about Malik and his great plans for the team -- and after the 1999 season going back to re-read it and go "wait a minute, where did this guy disappear?"
A struggling back-of-the-grid team with black cars being hoodwinked by an "energy drinks" company run by a very dubious individual is such a weird story. I wonder if it ever happened again?
Yep. There’s definitely a video. No, a SERIES of videos, in the Rich Energy debacle. The whole story has been unpicked in a brilliant thread on the Autosport Forum. It’s well worth a read.
Small note, it wasn't Giancarlo Minardi that Stoddart was buying Minardi from; it was Gabriele Rumi (Mr Fondmetal), who had taken control of the team from Giancarlo in 1996 and PSN. Rumi held a part- but controlling share with the majority shareholder (at 70%!) held by PSN, a TV company & Mazzacane's sponsor. Giancarlo Minardi himself had stayed in control of the team, but had sold shares to Rumi, Briatore and Ecclestone at the end of '95 as the team were in a spot of of financial trouble. Minardi himself also sold Alonso's management contract to Flavio in 2001, to keep the team going into 2002 (having taken Alonso on from former driver Adrian Campos) Rumi propped up the team very solidly during his tenure, but became gravely ill and so was happy to find a buyer who would keep funding the team, not just buy it for cash.
My Dad worked for Dupont (Jeff Gordon) in the early 90s then Agfa (Prost) til he retired. The amount of amazing costly free merchandise i got from the 90s rainbow warriors (Dupont) and Prost (Agfa) was staggering. Sponsors equal money, mostly. Cool vid, Aiden 👍🏼
I remember watching Australia and the Arrows going round with a minus number (-34 or something) and it was supposed to be a countdown to an announcement from the team/sponsor. The numbers ran out, then they ran with just t-minus on them for a few more after that. F1 at the time felt quite sanitised, but looking at it now with what we have now, they were good fun times.
A lot of those details weren't available back then. Very few ordinary people were on the internet - I was in 2000, _just._ It was more for academic work than looking up reasons as to why a team you liked went under, especially as so many were doing just that. I remember you talking about the Nigerian prince before, but the extra details really filled the story in. Thanks!
Well here we go again, in 1998 Arrows let Brian Hart built there engines with the promise that a major car manufacturer could be backing it if needed (Nissan, as a Nissan deligation was present when the A19 was rolled out) In 1999 nothing was heard of that again. In 2001 Verstappen was the sole reason that Arrows did score anything. The car used 2000 Peugeot engines rebranded as Asiatech. Which somehow performed well with low fuel. Jos the Boss did sign mid-season his contract for 2002. All knew that, it was somewhat a big announcement. Then suddenly in Winter 01, HHF signed for Arrows and Bernoldi was confirmed as his partner. Verstappen wasnt informed and only found out via media. The A23 (the last Arrows) was built for Verstappen, as he confirmed testing it while driving for Minardi. There was no interim car for minardi. It was intended , yes. But it never happened. And no Aguri modified A23´s nothing else.
I remember one of the F1 mags posted a quote by Malik which they immediately dismissed - he said "the next Michael Schumacher could be black". At the time, there were very few drivers anywhere in the junior formulae who looked like they might prove him right. The only other person who thought this might be true? Ron Dennis, who'd already been talking to a certain karting up-and-comer called Lewis Hamilton....so Malik got one thing right after all!
There's an excellent article in the August 2002 edition of "Formula 1 Magazine" entitled Tom Walkinshaw: Man Without a Plan. It documents the whole sorry saga right up until the day it all unraveled for Walkinshaw and Arrows. If you haven't seen it, it makes entertaining reading.
Unternehmensberatung. Like all German compound words, it's best to split it into components. Unter-nehmen-beratung. Basically, a business (unter-nehmen) consultant (beratung). English just writes business consultant and not businessconsultant.
But it wasn't the French telecoms company Orange though. It had Nordica and Ragno sponsorship in '81 and '82. Also, Arrows' first podium was at the 1978 Swedish GP with Patrese.
Malik was a man ahead of his time. His mistake was trying to make a splash as the head of a brand that didn't make any money before 2008, when that became just how everyone does business.
Really good video this! I was a kid back then and the only thing I remember about Arrows was thinking their cars looked really cool and them just vanishing into air but never really knowing why. I remember reading later on that it was because of money problems but this video clears a lot of that up. Just goes to show how one dodgy deal can how grave consequences even if they're not immediately felt I suppose! Also Aidan I'm gonna sound like a total nerd but I have to ask, the title of this video... Is that a Megadeth reference by any chance? 😂
Arrows always had so much potential, especially in this era. If only they hadn't been weighed down by that mountain of debt from this affair, they would have been a great purchase for someone like Stoddart or Red Bull. Like Tyrrell, even in the lean times with no money they could still get some decent performances. Internally they still had the culture of a real Formula 1 team, one which knew what it was doing. (Unlike Jaguar & BAR for example.)
RB would certainly have had to make large capital investments in new facilities much sooner. They would have needed to build a new factory in the first couple of years, to match their ambition. But Jaguar was such a basket-case of a team (although not as bad as it had been) when they took it over, I wonder if with Arrows they might have been more successful in their first couple of years than RBR were historically.
If I had a dollar for every African prince scam, I could buy an F1 team. Hell, I could buy out Liberty Media and fix everything wrong with modern F1 and still have cash left over.
Wasn't Malik the original 'Nigerian Prince' who kept emailing all and sundry to ask if he could use their bank accounts for a 'reasonable' return? i.e. all their savings! By the way, whatever happened to Rich Energy?
Are Arrows still the F1 team with most entries without winning a race? I think so. They used to get criticised for that back in the '90s (by people with more stats then actual knowledge of the sport). Which always seemed unfair. They not only survived when so may other teams didn't, but were a very decent team which consistently scored points (only 1 non scoring season) when competitors with similar resources like Minardi never came close. If only Damon's hydraulics had lasted a few more laps in Hungary, if only they'd had the financing for 1998...
So if I want to scam an F1 team by getting my name on their car for essentially free….I just need to come up with a shell corporation masquerading as an energy drink company? Because yeah, somehow, that’s happened more than once in F1 😂
"Minadi on life support..." And lately, the rumours have been circulating that they might be taken off that and making a glorious return. I know they have been saying this for a while now, but Stoddard has, I read, applied to have a UK based company named Minadi entered into the rolls at Companies House
More a downfall of arrows video. Interviews with Frentzen & Bernoldi on F1 Podcast on the last days of the team are very exciting. The A23 was a great car and with a suitable budget to run and develop it properly, 2002 would have been way more successful. Arrows could have been saved if Walkinshaw had agreed to the offer from Red Bull to buy the team
A Nigerian Prince... Isn't that jus a classic phone call scam? Oh, wait, now I'm thinking of Prince Nana from AEW... Man, I'm making a lot of AEW references today...
I was surprised that Orange didn't move their Money to a Championship contending team appropriately McLaren so if Orange had gone to McLaren to replace West McLaren would have gone back to their classic Orange and Black livery much earlier
