{"id":22468,"date":"2014-07-04T07:01:35","date_gmt":"2014-07-04T11:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=22468"},"modified":"2014-07-04T07:01:35","modified_gmt":"2014-07-04T11:01:35","slug":"team-drivers-surprised-by-caterham-sale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/team-drivers-surprised-by-caterham-sale\/","title":{"rendered":"Team drivers surprised by Caterham sale"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Caterham&#8217;s change of ownership this week also caught its race drivers by surprise.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It was as much news to me as it was for everyone else,&#8221; Swedish rookie Marcus Ericsson said at Silverstone on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"ngg-singlepic ngg-left alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/gallery\/f1-2014-rif-images\/f1-2014-drivers\/Kamui-Kobayashi-3.jpg\" alt=\"Kamui-Kobayashi-3\" width=\"457\" height=\"304\" \/>Swiftly after founder Tony Fernandes admitted his F1 project &#8220;hasn&#8217;t worked&#8221;, it emerged Caterham has been sold to an unnamed Swiss-Middle Eastern consortium.<\/p>\n<p>Former HRT chiefs Colin Kolles and Manfredi Ravetto, and ex-Minardi driver Christijan Albers, are now in charge.<\/p>\n<p>When asked about Caterham&#8217;s surprise new future, team driver Kamui Kobayashi said at Silverstone: &#8220;I really didn&#8217;t speak with them (the new management) about it yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think next week we will have more time, so let&#8217;s see.\u00a0 I will drive for this year, sure,&#8221; said the Japanese.<\/p>\n<p>Oddly, the green-coloured turmoil is actually good news for Ericsson and Kobayashi, as just a few weeks ago it was being rumoured Caterham would be shut down long before the end of the 2014 season.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I really appreciate that we can still continue to race,&#8221; Kobayashi admitted, &#8220;and I think our target is clear that we need to push to get back the championship position.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We need to focus, and I think the last few months we were struggling with the budget, but now it seems we can use a bit more budget, so let&#8217;s see what we can do.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>With traditional rival Marussia breaking through recently for its first ever points, Caterham risks losing access to the lucrative prize money allocated by F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have nothing to lose, this is simple,&#8221; Kobayashi agreed.\u00a0 &#8220;The new boss is aggressive but I think this is what we need to do.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Caterham&#8217;s change of ownership this week also caught its race drivers by surprise. &#8220;It was as much news to me as it was for everyone else,&#8221; Swedish rookie Marcus Ericsson said at Silverstone on Thursday. Swiftly after founder Tony Fernandes admitted his F1 project &#8220;hasn&#8217;t worked&#8221;, it emerged Caterham has been sold to an unnamed &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[3605,5262,5340,97,387],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22468"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22469,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22468\/revisions\/22469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}