Former Caterham F1 Team owner Tony Fernandes has placed some of the blame for Caterham’s downfall on the bigger teams in the sport.
The Malaysian businessman reckons the huge budgets teams like Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull operate on make it impossible for smaller outfits to survive and sooner or later those at the back will have to close down.
“People can blame whoever, but the big teams are as much at fault as anyone,” he told Sky Sports. “The gap has become way too big and it’s money. And so I thought, ‘Well, I can’t compete’. But I can compete at QPR; I can compete at Air Asia.
“Rather than continue something where I thought, one, I wasn’t able to give it as much time as possible, two, I thought we were on a beating to none anyway, you’ve got to be brave and say ‘Look, we screwed up. You can’t compete; you thought you could and time to leave’.
“The sport has to examine itself as well. Ultimately we couldn’t carry on and we would have eventually gone into administration anyway or closed down the team.”
Whilst admitting motorsport is over for him as a potential business, he will support administrators as they seek a new buyer for the Caterham team.
“There are people who want to go racing, for different reasons and Caterham has everything there to do it. There may even be teams within F1 who want a second team – a Red Bull/Toro Rosso situation. So we’ll give it maximum support but it’s not something I want to get involved in anymore. You’ve got to immerse yourself in it. Racing’s over for me.”
