JULY 31, 2002

What happens if Pollock does buy Arrows?

Craig Pollock is rumored to be close to a deal to buy the troubled Arrows team. This is all well and good but observers are asking how the entire operation will work - as the Arrows team is currently based inside the TWR factory at Leafield. According to our sources the plan is to create a situation in which the F1 division becomes an independent unit inside the factory for the short-term but as soon as the purchase is completed (if it happens) Pollock would commission the construction of a new factory elsewhere. There have been suggestions that Pollock might move everything into the McLaren factory in Woking but this is unlikely to be a good solution. The McLaren factory is leased and so the team does not own the building and so the only value would be to acquire machinery which will not be needed in McLaren's new factory.

We have seen in the past that the construction of an F1 factory can be achieved relatively quickly but what takes time (and large amounts of money) is the construction of windtunnels, the most important tool in F1 these days.

The Arrows team does not own its windtunnels at the moment as they were sold to another Walkinshaw-related company called Broadstone some time ago. These however are expected to be part of any deal. The team has two windtunnel facilities, one being the original Arrows 40% tunnel at Milton Keynes, the other the former Ministry of Defence facility in Bedford. The three facilities are separated by around 50 miles and logic dictates that anyone who buys the three would want to locate a factory somewhere between them - somewhere, for example, in the region of Silverstone, which happens to lie directly between Enstone and Bedford and just a few miles to the north of Milton Keynes.