Bueno si tiene que haber un nuevo equipo en 2011, espero que sea Epsilon Euskadi...así que para apoyar la causa:

http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/...on-aims-for-f1/

Epsilon aims for F1

March 22, 2010 by joesaward

Epsilon Euskadi says that it will be bidding for the 13th available Formula 1 franchise. The team was involved in a bid last year but lost out to Campos (now HRT), USF1, Manor (now Virgin Racing) and Lotus. This was surprising given the impressive facilities that the team has built close to Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital city of the autonomous community of the Basque Country, in northern Spain.

The team is owned and run by Joan Villadelprat, who says that he was stuck in a classic chicken and egg situation last year as the FIA wanted proof of the teams financing and his sponsor wanted the guarantee of an entry before making a commitment.

From Barcelona, Joan first encountered F1 at Montjuich Park in 1971 and he immediately decided that he wanted to get involved. He worked for a while in the under-developed Spanish racing scene before joining the Equipo Nacional Espanol, a team that had been designed to promote young talent in Spain. The drivers were Fermin Velez and Jordi Caton and they raced Ralts in international Formula 3, against future stars such as Nelson Piquet, Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Derek Warwick. The money eventually ran out and Villadelprat moved on to the team that had impressed him the most in Britain an operation called Project Four Racing, run by a young Ron Dennis. For the next eight years he worked for Dennis, switching to McLaren when Marlboro engineered a merger between the old F1 team and Denniss ambitious young operation. Those were great years with the McLaren-TAG combination winning three straight Drivers titles with Niki Lauda and Alain Prost. In 1987 former McLaren technical director John Barnard lured Villadelprat away to Ferrari, where he became chief mechanic. At the end of 1989 he was recruited by Tyrrell as team manager but after a promising season in 1990, the team had a disappointing year and Joan was then hired by Benetton. He quickly became Operations Director and went on to oversee two World Championship titles for Michael Schumacher in 1994 and 95. He stayed on until the start of 2000 but then went home to Spain with the aim of setting up his own F1 team in Barcelona. When sponsor Telefonica decided against the plan, Joan joined Prost Grand Prix as Managing Director. It would be a short-lived job. The team went out of business at the start of 2002 and once again Joan went back to Spain to embark on a new project. He formed an alliance with Frances Epsilon Sport to run a project in the Nissan World Series in Spain. The team was given the name Epsilon Euskadi and it was soon very competitive. In 2005 it won the series, which had been rebadged as the Renault World Series, with a young driver called Robert Kubica. Villadelprat then bought out his partners and teamed up with his old driver Caton, and Epsilon has been quietly expanding ever since.

Villadelprats policy has been not only to aim for F1 but also to lay the groundwork for future Spanish teams.

Since we started Epsilon we have taken three or four guys each year from the technical high school and trained them to be mechanics, he says. If they have the right attitude, then we keep them. Now we have a Masters degree course, which is linked to Mondragon University. This is for graduate engineers who want to be involved in motorsport. So we are training new engineers all the time. That is part of the process. From the beginning of the project we were aiming to combine high technology and innovation with racing, education and an industrial element as well. When we started out in 2003, we bought one team and we slowly grew. We had young guys and we needed funding for their ambitions. The Spanish Ministry of Innovation was interested and offered suitable business loans to aid the development process. You apply and you get very good conditions. You get 15-year loans at very reasonable interest rates. We have two of those from the Spanish government. The local Basque authority was also interested and was looking to invest European Union money to create research and have things for them to do so we started another team. Then we said that we wanted to show the world that we could be a constructor. We did not have what we needed to do that and so we started thinking of how it could be achieved. We were not thinking about F1 at all. We wanted to build a suitable facility that could do all the things that we want to do.

Villadelprat and Caton recruited top engineers Sergio Rinland and Henri Durand while also looking at ways to get government development facilities in its region.

When we decided to build a sportscar for the Le Mans 24 Hours we began to look for customers and we had some lined up. Obviously the recession came along and the orders disappeared. We had the old factory but we broke ground on the new one in February 2008. At that time the whole world was not collapsing and the idea was to look at markets apart from Formula 1. There are lots of other categories and when you look at it there are only a handful of companies who can manufacture racing cars. We would like to have a percentage of that market.

The Epsilon factory has cost around $60m to build and includes everything that a motor racing company could need, including a 60 percent scale rolling road wind tunnel.

At the back of my mind I figured that the facility could one day be used for Formula 1, Villadelprat admits. If one day the sun and the moon are in alignment and there is a chance to go to F1 then we would take it. Although the recession slowed things down, as one door closed another opened.

What we have been doing is to slowly show people what is possible, he says. I started out when a guy wanted to set up a Nissan World Series team and wanted to get money from the government and asked me to be a consultant. From there we were able to convince them to help us create an industry. It started with the school for mechanics and engineers and was followed by teams and drivers. Then we created the Le Mans car, which was a product that we could sell, and now we are building a manufacturing base. We are creating an industry. Maybe it is not the right time to do this, but we cannot stop. We need to push on. I dont know how long it will take, but one day we will be there in F1. I am convinced of that. We have the facility, the people, the know-how, the means and the tools to do that.

Finding money for motorsport in Spain has never been easy, but Joan says that it is a very different story to find money for F1 rather than for the Le Mans 24 Hours.

We have Alonso, he says. We have two Grands Prix. We have circuits and we have a lot of testing in the winter. F1 is important in Spain. It is really hard to get a penny for Le Mans, although it was a tremendous thing last year that for the first time a Spanish driver Marc Gene has won there. That got a lot of media coverage but we were there with the first Spanish-built car ever to race at Le Mans and no-one noticed. Pegaso did enter some cars back in the 1950s but they never qualified.

Although the Epsilon did not figure strongly in the race, it was the source of enormous pride for Villadelprat.

It is a question of mentality and education. I dont know if it is politically correct to say it, but people in Spain do not think that we can do the things that we are doing. They think that we must have bought the wind tunnel second-hand rather than having built it ourselves. They think that you cannot do these things in Spain. That is what they do in England and in Germany, but not in Spain. We need to change that mentality. I spent years in some high places in F1 but it was never really noticed. Now things are changing, but maybe it is a question of timing. Maybe I was born too early.

You have to open your mind and look at the opportunities out there, he continues. We have had windmills being developed in the tunnel and we did a project also to improve the efficiency of the football. We have other projects with customers in racing and with car manufacturers. Right now in Spain there are three or four roadcar projects we are helping. They are not very well known yet. We are open to any kind of business. We spent six or seven months developing the 2009 sportscar design so we will have to see what happens. We are talking to possible customers, but that largely depends on the economy.

The important thing is that we keep going forwards. We have tremendous potential. We have people like Sergio and Henri, both of whom have enormous experience. We have a lot of good people. We can design and manufacture cars from Formula Ford to Formula 1.

If you ask him about the people who have influenced him in his career, Joan is very clear.

Ron Dennis, he says immediately. I admire him. He has been tremendous. I can call him a friend and he has always helped me. We have had fights too, particularly when I was running Benetton and he was at McLaren. People do not realise what he has done, starting from where he started. Not many people in the world have done that. I admire his way of thinking and his attention to detail. I believe in the same things. I had the good luck to be with him for seven years and I learned a lot. Sure, he has his negative points too but he taught me to work in an ordered fashion. When I went to Ferrari the team was a disaster. The youngest race mechanics were 50 plus and I was a 30-year old Spaniard trying to get them to change. I was the first foreigner to be the chief mechanic. I think I did a good job there.

John Barnard really helped me to understand mechanical things. He taught me to find out the reasons for things, step by step, so that one could understand the problems. If I am a good mechanic, it is thanks to him. I moved to Tyrrell and we had some good people there, with Harvey Postlethwaite, Jean-Claude Migeot and we had a good year with very little money, so I got the experience of working with a lot of money and then working with very little. When I went to Benetton I was really running the team. I designed it, employed the people, created the team spirit. It was different to other teams. Flavio Briatore does not understand much, but if he trusts you he lets you do what you want. I learned from the mistakes I made there. After that I went to Prost and I found out how to lose. It was really lost before I got there, but they had everything that they needed apart from management. So what you see here is a result of a little bit of everything.

The Epsilon factory is mightily impressive. It has been designed with all the departments in the right places, with plenty of space and light. It is huge and includes not only all the manufacturing and race team areas but also an upstairs section which not only houses offices but also allows people to see the whole facility below, without interfering with the way it is run. If there are visitors, they need not be disruptive. And it has been cleverly thought through. All the extraneous machinery has cunningly been hidden away inside the outer shell of the structure so that there is none of the clutter that one sees at so many F1 factories that have evolved over the years. Upstairs there is also the area where the Masters degree is taught. Villadelprat aims to produce graduates from the course who will be capable of running not only his operations but also teams of their own. It is a broad and impressive vision.

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Las instalaciones son impresionantes, ahora queda recopilar los apoyos que segun Villadelprat tenía asegurados para 3 años.El éxito que pueda tener en la concrección de esos apoyos `puede depender de lo que haga este años el Hispania.Si logran terminar como el 10º equipo, se animarán a invertir en mayor medida que si termina el último.
Por otra parte, algo más tendrá que aportar además de las instalaciones para que la FIA esta vez sí, escoja su proyecto.Prodrive y Lola son 2 fuertes compañías con experiencia en esto.Y los restos del equipo Toyota están ahí, así que o Lola o Prodrive seguro que los compran.La cosa no sólo va a depender de las instalaciones, así que sería aconsejable que no lo volviera a jugar todo a esta baza...

La cuestión aquí es si realmente Villadelprat quiere la plaza, si la quiere a casi cualquier precio, y si por tanto ha aprendido de los "tejemanejes" de la FIA con lo que pasó la pasada temporada. Si todo esto cuadra, Epsilon tendrá la plaza, sino la tendrá el que mejor se mueva en los pasillos y laberintos de la FIA.

Yo creo que con la "tongada" de nuevos del pasado año... se le pusieron unas condiciones (lease motores Cosworth) algo que Epsilon no quería y parecía tener conversaciones abanzadas con otro motorista. También sabemos porque se "recomendaba" montar Cosworth.

Creo que este año no deben estar pidiendo esos "requisitos" como montar Cosworth... supongo que los / "el" interesado en eso... ya se ha asegurado la jugada.

Por cierto yo tenía muchas dudas y tras ver el resultado, hay que reconocer que Cosworth ha hecho un gran trabajo y ahí tenemos a Williams luchando con los demás.

A Viladelprat se le ven muchas ganas, siempre ha declarado que su objetivo es estar en F1 a corto o largo plazo, que cuando se les de la oportunidad "estaremos preparados" ... tampoco creo que los 19 millones de fianza deban ser un problema... porque si realmente quieres entrar en F1 debes tener de sobra esa cantidad para dipositarla como fianza... aunque claro está que es un pico, y que ese pico queda bloqueado hasta que plantas los monoplazas en el primer GP o puede que en el primer test (supongo). Que empiecen probar a escala el diseño del monoplaza suena bastante bien, aunque no olvidemos que Viladelprat ya tenía el proyecto F1 iniciado.

Yo tampoco creo que se necesite un equipo más en parrilla, pero si es Epsilon bienvenido sea... y ya no creo que se haga por la necesidad o no, yo creo que hay alguno tambaleándose, HRT ya sabemos como está (si es que no hay nadie tras sus pasos) de Virgin no me acabo de fiar aunque supongo que siempre se puede llegar a una venta, y de Lotus tienen un buen grifo, pero no se yo hasta que punto seguirá saliendo "agua" ($$$$). En definitiva que es probable que por si a caso... se quiera meter otro equipo en las parrillas y convendría estudiar los proyectos y aunque eso nunca se sabe... no sea alguien que pueda estar hoy y desaparecer mañana.

+1

Epsilon Euskadi e il mondiale F.1
Villadelprat: "Il modello è in galleria del vento"


Mancano pochi giorni al momento in cui la FIA annuncerà la scelta del tredicesimo team che entrerà a far parte del mondiale F.1 2011. Tre i candidati rimasti dopo la rinuncia di ART e Cypher Group: Durango, Epsilon Euskadi e Stefan GP. Ma alcuni sostengono che la lista comprenda in realtà ben 15 squadre. Italiaracing ha contattato Joan Villadelprat, team principal della Epsilon Euskadi, per verificare a che punto è il progetto:

"Stiamo lavorando, il modello è in galleria del vento. Dal punto di vista economico abbiamo un budget interessante, ma non ancora quello che voglio per poter affrontare nella dovuta maniera il programma F.1. I possibili partner prima di investire tanti soldi vogliono avere la certezza che noi siamo stati scelti, ma questo si saprà a fine agosto".

Che è molto tardi per lanciare un team di F.1. Finché una squadra non ha la certezza di avere il posto assicurato non può certo iniziare a spendere o reclutare personale. E questo è un guaio. Non si capisce infatti perchè la FIA, che nella precedente selezione diramò la lista a metà giugno, questa volta sia stata così lenta.

¿Stefan GP sigue por medio?

Pues me da a mi que no hay nada que hacer

P.D: Siento entristecerme por Epsilon, se que ahora me toca mi ración de hoguera

Lo único que le separa a Epsilon Euskadi es el parné, y viendo que en este país ni dios quiere apostar por un proyecto pues pasará lo de siempre, que nos quedaremos a dos velas.

Saludos

Olvidad a Stefan GP, ya dejó claro Todt que no le hacía ninguna gracia cómo habían actuado el año pasado. Y, respecto a la tardanza en anunciar el poseedor de la plaza vacante, todo parece indicar que es porque ninguno de los equipos ofrece garantías.

Yo no descartaría que la vacante quedara desierta.

Pues si tu que estas metido en el mundillo, comentas lo que comentas, mal vamos.....

La maFIA está siendo mucho más exigente en este proceso. No quiere que pase lo que sucedió hace un año y parece que está centrando mucho su labor en el tema económico.

Saludos

Lo veo bien, por una vez hace algo coherente la FIA. Porque lo del año pasado fue un esperpento. Tan solo Lotus (y elegido en segunda ronda) tenía garantías como se está viendo. Porque Campos fue vendido a Carabante, Manor al grupo Virgin de Richard Branson y USF1 ni eso, se quedaron en nada.

Así que este año, si la FIA hace bien las cosas, no se repetirá lo del año pasado, y si ve que se repite, mejor una plaza vacante que otro ridículo.

JACQUES VILLENEUBE SE PONE COMO FAVORITO


Jacques Villeneuve debe tenerlo bastante claro, o al menos contar con unas esperanzas enormes no sólo de conseguir su equipo de F1 para el año que viene, sino también de poder hacerlo andar.

Arremete contra Epsilon Euskadi de una manera muy sutil diciendo que al haber puesto ya un monoplaza en el túnel de viento están poniendo el carro antes que los bueyes. Cierto es que resulta aventurado y costosamente arriesgado empezar a desarrollar un monoplaza antes siquiera de saber si tendrán su franquicia para 2011, pero deben ser costes asumidos por una compañía que se dedica precisamente a esto, tienen su propio equipo de técnicos, túnel de viento, etc.

En caso de que les concedieran la licencia tendrían mucho trabajo adelantado, y si no, siempre podrían venderles la patente a otro equipo. Lola, por ejemplo, apostó por algo similar el año pasado y su monoplaza parece dormir el sueño de los justos porque nadie sabe nada de aquel estilizado bólido que presentaron a la prensa en su factoría a mediados de 2009.

En unas declaraciones a La Presse, medio canadiense, el quebequés no quiso confirmar que asistiría a la anunciada reunión de las escuderías contendientes de esta semana con la FIA. Si confirmó algo: a pesar de que su foto está en la web de StefanGP, él ya no tiene nada que ver con este proyecto. En Epsilon tendrán algo que decir al respecto, ¿no?.

Puestos en contacto los gerifaltes del equipo vasco no están disponibles (porque andan liados con la presentación de su candidatura ante la Federación). A finales de mes veremos si les ha merecido la pena correr tanto


http://www.virutasdegoma.com/2010/08/jacqu...-por-el-tejado/

Podria Chyper Group haberse unido a Durango y Villeneuve?

Estos se borraron del mapa.

Saludos

Desde luego, el unico equipo que se mantiene serio, sin rumores absurdos ni declaraciones malsonantes es Epsilon. Todo lo contrario; enseña sus modernas instalaciones, tiene un equipo humano con experiencia en la F1 y demuestra una filosofia que me recuerda a la de Williams (apuestan por el monoplaza, no por pilotos).

La unica duda que tengo es si la FIA les dará luz verde por temas monetarios, o nos quedamos con 12 equipos.

Yo creo que no se produciran incorporaciones salvo que se produzcan bajas. El tema es:

¿Sigue pudiendose vender la papeleta de equipo F-1? Porque entonces no se a que juega la FIA.

En teoría faltan dos días para que se decida cual será el decimotercer equipo de la parrilla. Es hora de analizar un poco el como está todo:

DURANGO

- A FAVOR: Tiene a un piloto firmado como es Jaques Villeneuve (que puede ser en contra si vemos sus últimos años en F1 y como vuelve para deambular de nuevo por las pistas)

- EN CONTRA: Escasos éxitos deportivos en las categorías inferiores.
Dejaron la GP2 por falta de presupuesto o ¿para centrarse en su proyecto de F1?

EPSILON EUSKADI

- A FAVOR: Instalaciones que son la envidia de un equipo de F1 y ya se encuentran trabajando en el monoplaza con el que competirán si son seleccionados. A esto hay que sumarle la experiencia de Villadelprat en equipos como Ferrari o Mclaren y que han sido cantera de pilotos como Kubica.
- EN CONTRA: Exceptuando la victoria en Fórmula Renault 2.0 con Albert Costa en 2009, no han tenido éxitos deportivos de relumbrón desde que Kubica se proclamó Campeón de las World Series en 2004.
Se quedaron fuera de Le Mans en 2009 por falta de presupuesto.

STEFAN GP

- A FAVOR: Los millones de Stefanovich y la estructura de Toyota.
- EN CONTRA: Según ha comentado alguien en el foro, no le hace mucha gracia a Todt sus formas de actuar.

fue en el 2005 cuando gano las World Series, porque ese año se corrio en el Bilbao Urban Circuit

Gracias por el apunte

Creo que la decisión no se toma el mismo viernes; el viernes es cuando se reunen con los equipos, mientras que antes de final de mes si tienen que decidir. Algo he leido, aunque puede que esté equivocado...

duda, si stefan gp tiene la estructura de toyota, que le han vendido a caranante e hispania? el mismo chasis tf110, porque recuerdo que esa era la gran baza de este equipo para entrar el año pasado (me acaba de venir a la mente despues de escuchar la otra noticia)