Adapta World Rally Team may only field one car in the 2009 WRC and not run as a Manufacturer Team
Adapta World Rally Team boss Morten Ostberg told wrc.com that they need the help of Prodrive if they are to run as a Manufacturer Team in the 2009 WRC.
Morten Ostberg explained the situation to wrc.com:
None of the plans and contracts that we have with Prodrive to operate our car and equipment will be influenced at all by Subaru’s withdrawal. Mads’ programme will be exactly the same as it was before and we are still working closely with some very good drivers hoping to drive our second car.
I don’t believe there is anything in the FIA regulations that prevents us from running as a Manufacturer Team if Subaru are not competing as a Manufacturer - but there are some cost and practical elements to address. One thing that will certainly change is our on-event relationship with Subaru because our contract and our plan with Prodrive was to run the team alongside them - in the same way that Stobart runs alongside Ford - but now that cannot happen.
Under the terms of our original agreement all we had to do on WRC events was put up a couple of our own service tents and that was it - everything else was included in our package with the Subaru World Rally Team.
I know we have the capacity to run two or three cars ourselves, but we don’t have the facilities to run them in the proper Manufacturer Team way unless we do this with the cooperation of, or as a joint venture with Prodrive. If that can’t happen, then we are prepared to carry on just running our own team.”
Discussions are due to take place as soon as key SWRT personnel return from crisis meetings with Subaru in Japan.
Ostberg added:
There are many possibilities, many things which can be done, but it depends on how Prodrive wants to approach it. It’s possible, for instance that we could use their equipment and maybe even some of the drivers. That is a possibility. Contractually it’s likely to be a complex area. I believe Petter is contracted to Subaru until the end of 2009 while Chris is contracted to Prodrive. I don’t know for sure but right now we are willing to consider all types of possibilities.”
Source: wrc.com
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