DECEMBER 15, 2001

Richards steps back from rallying - to do what?

DAVID RICHARDS, the commercial rights holder of the World Rally Championship, is to step back from his day-to-day involvement in the organization of the series.

"I have put together a really good team of people," Richards said, "and I am going to stand back and see how it works."

This begs the question: what is Richards going to do now? Originally, the intention was to float his Prodrive automotive engineering company and while this may still go ahead, the market conditions at the moment are probably not as good as they could be. There is no doubt that somewhere along the line Richards still has the ambition to be involved in Formula 1. He ran Benetton for just a year and F1 is very much unfinished business. However the next time he gets involved the intention is to be in control of a team. With several F1 teams struggling at the moment it might be a good moment to buy one of the F1 "franchises".

Whatever the case, Richards is a man who is worth keeping an eye on...