| By James Roberts | |
| F1 Racing associate editor | |
|
It's fair to say that Dr Colin Kolles isn't your typical Formula 1 team boss. He doesn't have the smiley, media-friendly persona of, say, a Christian Horner.
Instead he has a manner more akin to that of one Bernard Charles Ecclestone. The intimidating scowl, the reticent responses to questions - yet, underneath, there is a mischievous sense of humour.
Over the past 10 years, Kolles has gained a reputation for rescuing F1 teams on the cusp of crisis. With debts mounting, Eddie Jordan had little choice but to bail out of his own team at the end of 2004. Kolles, with investment from Canadian businessman Alex Shnaider, took over the team and renamed it 'Midland', after Shnaider's steel-trading company.
Colin Kolles in his Chavski era LAT |
You might recall Kolles was dubbed 'Chavski' on his first visit to the paddock, following his last-minute purchase of a cap from the Burberry store at his hotel to protect himself from the Melbourne sun.
Far from being perturbed by the mockery, at season's end he donned a shirt with 'Chavski' printed on the back of it, to celebrate the moment the Jordan name formally bowed out of F1. If you think you can predict Kolles's next move, then, to employ one of his oft-used phrases, "you are very much mistaken".
After Shnaider cashed in his investment and departed F1, Kolles guided the team through phases as Spyker and Force India, then was asked to sort out the mess that was Campos F1 at the start of 2010.
In the space of just three weeks, he took an organisation that "didn't even have a screwdriver" and created Hispania Racing (HRT F1).
Cars were hastily assembled for Bruno Senna and Karun Chandhok in the Bahrain pitlane - and somehow made it on to the grid.
Fast-forward to 2014, when Kolles received a call on the Monday after the Bahrain GP to help sort out Caterham. By July, owner Tony Fernandes had departed, new investors had arrived, and former F1 racer Christijan Albers had been appointed as team principal. Kolles continues as a consultant for the project.
Kolles' first team forays were in F3, where Adrian Sutil was among the drivers XPB |
Although he's happy to chat to journalists, he rarely speaks on the record. But on this occasion, he has granted a rare interview to F1 Racing. We've arranged to meet not in the paddock, but away from the hubbub, in the Intercontinental Hotel on the banks of the Danube in the centre of Budapest. It's all very Cold War.
"I have been very busy behind the scenes," announces Kolles with a glint in his eye when asked what he's been up to since the demise of HRT.
He has just arrived at the hotel with Albers, who has driven the pair of them here from Munich. Shortly after this interview, it is announced that Albers will step down after just two months at the helm (citing "private reasons") to be replaced by his deputy, Manfredi Ravetto.
But now, Kolles reiterates to Albers: "I have to do this interview. It's the only one I'll give." Then promptly orders a "Zero Coke."
Romanian-born Kolles grew up in Germany and was always interested in cars. He was a rally co-driver at the age of 16, finishing fourth in a Group B Audi Quattro in the Romanian Rally, then a round of the European championship.
Caterham requires "resuscitation", says Kolles LAT |
After studying medicine and dentistry, he continued to pursue his love of racing by supporting young drivers, first meeting Albers when the Dutchman was racing in Formula Ford. After setting up an F3 team, which would later enter the DTM and LMP1 sportscar racing, Kolles arrived in F1 with Shnaider and Midland at the start of 2005.
Since then he has been instrumental in putting together various high-level sponsorship deals and financing projects in F1. He was responsible for introducing one of his former business partners - Toto Wolff - to Frank Williams and came very close to taking a team principal role at that team. Kolles's company still has a small shareholding in the Williams team today.
So to the point: what is going on at Caterham?
"You have to imagine this team is like a clinically dead patient," says Kolles seriously. "We are the intensive care specialists trying to revitalise it.
"There was no clear structure, no control. A lot of the people there didn't know how to run a small team. It was like dynamite fishing. You throw a lot of dynamite into the sea - it explodes and then you have a lot of dead fish. You do it once - you don't do it again.
"With all respect to Mr Fernandes, he is a successful businessman, but didn't know how to run a small F1 team.
Shnaider with Kolles at the launch of the Midland team in 2006 LAT |
"A lot of it was driven by ego - you see it all over this business - but that's not my interest. I'm just here to turn the team around and make it more efficient."
The new owners of the team are a Swiss-Arab consortium that Kolles has worked with over the past few years on a number of other projects - but he's adamant that their identity must be kept confidential and they are not publicly involved.
"Past experience has proved the pitfalls," he says.
"I repeat, this team is like a patient that is clinically dead. We are trying now to revitalise it. It has a heartbeat and is slowly trying to open its eyes.
"If you have this kind of patient in the hospital, you know the family is also not allowed to be with the doctors during the operation. There will only be disturbances in this respect. We need silence and to do our job correctly.
"When everything is fine, I will disappear and the new owners will come and be presented.
"This is what I have requested personally. It was one of the conditions, because I have seen what has happened in the past.
Huge efforts were required to get HRT on the 2010 grid LAT |
"Mr Shnaider was an honourable man who had good intentions, but was put in a corner, maybe wrongly advised. When journalists asked him whether he would sell the team, he answered: 'everything is for sale'. Then things were written about him saying he wasn't serious about doing F1 - so it went wrong. It was very damaging.
"The next one was Victor Muller [of Spyker] who came in with a big bang announcing Ferrari engines and saying we would be a top team - and what happened? It didn't finish in a positive way from my experience.
"Then we had the third one, Vijay Mallya, where I had to pay photographers to take 300 pictures of him a day... I didn't need this type of disturbance.
"All these personalities are very much ego-driven,including [Jose Ramon] Carabante of HRT. Why did he and his son have to sit on the pitwall with headphones on?
"What is the reason for that? This is just disturbing. For us, we are here just to do a job. That is the reason."
An inevitable side effect of cutting costs to make an F1 team efficient is a reduced headcount, and there has been a public spat between aggrieved former employees and their new management. But Kolles says cutting staff was necessary.
Winkelhock led on his sole F1 start with Spyker at the Nurburgring in 2007 XPB |
"The people who are in the factory know this, too," he adds. "Even the people who had to go knew it was necessary. There is now a simple structure where people have their own responsibilities and their own job descriptions stating very clearly what they have to achieve. There is no discussion about it.
"And it will not be based in Leafield - not at this factory," he continues. "The factory is completely inappropriate for F1. It is wrongly built, too big, too old and not right. We have not purchased this - it is still owned by Fernandes.
"The team will leave. It will still be in the UK; at the moment we don't know where. As soon as the team is stabilised, we will look into this."
Windtunnel updates added to the car from Spa helped Caterham show improved performance early in the second half of the season. The goal is to move up from the bottom of the constructors' standings.
"Maybe we'll finish ahead of Sauber?" suggests Kolles.
"Listen - you never know. You can have a lucky punch even with a slow car. I've had lucky punches in the past with Jordan. In America we finished on the podium in 2005; at the Nurburgring in 2007 we led the race with Markus Winkelhock for Spyker.
"Then Adrian Sutil was fourth at Monaco in 2008, when Kimi Raikkonen crashed into the back of us. Something can always happen..."
With Kolles at the team, you can be assured feathers will be ruffled. Again he smiles, clearly relishing his role as troubleshooter-in-chief. As he once remarked in his HRT days: "If anyone is in my way, they soon get out of it..."
It won't be an easy ride, but as so many people before Tony Fernandes have discovered, just spending money isn't the answer. Spending it wisely is the key to success.
This interview appears in the November issue of F1 Racing, which is now on sale and features a 'showdown special' analysis of the 2014 title race.
| By James Roberts | |
| F1 Racing associate editor | |
|
It's fair to say that Dr Colin Kolles isn't your typical Formula 1 team boss. He doesn't have the smiley, media-friendly persona of, say, a Christian Horner.
Instead he has a manner more akin to that of one Bernard Charles Ecclestone. The intimidating scowl, the reticent responses to questions - yet, underneath, there is a mischievous sense of humour.
Over the past 10 years, Kolles has gained a reputation for rescuing F1 teams on the cusp of crisis. With debts mounting, Eddie Jordan had little choice but to bail out of his own team at the end of 2004. Kolles, with investment from Canadian businessman Alex Shnaider, took over the team and renamed it 'Midland', after Shnaider's steel-trading company.
Colin Kolles in his Chavski era LAT |
You might recall Kolles was dubbed 'Chavski' on his first visit to the paddock, following his last-minute purchase of a cap from the Burberry store at his hotel to protect himself from the Melbourne sun.
Far from being perturbed by the mockery, at season's end he donned a shirt with 'Chavski' printed on the back of it, to celebrate the moment the Jordan name formally bowed out of F1. If you think you can predict Kolles's next move, then, to employ one of his oft-used phrases, "you are very much mistaken".
After Shnaider cashed in his investment and departed F1, Kolles guided the team through phases as Spyker and Force India, then was asked to sort out the mess that was Campos F1 at the start of 2010.
In the space of just three weeks, he took an organisation that "didn't even have a screwdriver" and created Hispania Racing (HRT F1).
Cars were hastily assembled for Bruno Senna and Karun Chandhok in the Bahrain pitlane - and somehow made it on to the grid.
Fast-forward to 2014, when Kolles received a call on the Monday after the Bahrain GP to help sort out Caterham. By July, owner Tony Fernandes had departed, new investors had arrived, and former F1 racer Christijan Albers had been appointed as team principal. Kolles continues as a consultant for the project.
Kolles' first team forays were in F3, where Adrian Sutil was among the drivers XPB |
Although he's happy to chat to journalists, he rarely speaks on the record. But on this occasion, he has granted a rare interview to F1 Racing. We've arranged to meet not in the paddock, but away from the hubbub, in the Intercontinental Hotel on the banks of the Danube in the centre of Budapest. It's all very Cold War.
"I have been very busy behind the scenes," announces Kolles with a glint in his eye when asked what he's been up to since the demise of HRT.
He has just arrived at the hotel with Albers, who has driven the pair of them here from Munich. Shortly after this interview, it is announced that Albers will step down after just two months at the helm (citing "private reasons") to be replaced by his deputy, Manfredi Ravetto.
But now, Kolles reiterates to Albers: "I have to do this interview. It's the only one I'll give." Then promptly orders a "Zero Coke."
Romanian-born Kolles grew up in Germany and was always interested in cars. He was a rally co-driver at the age of 16, finishing fourth in a Group B Audi Quattro in the Romanian Rally, then a round of the European championship.
Caterham requires "resuscitation", says Kolles LAT |
After studying medicine and dentistry, he continued to pursue his love of racing by supporting young drivers, first meeting Albers when the Dutchman was racing in Formula Ford. After setting up an F3 team, which would later enter the DTM and LMP1 sportscar racing, Kolles arrived in F1 with Shnaider and Midland at the start of 2005.
Since then he has been instrumental in putting together various high-level sponsorship deals and financing projects in F1. He was responsible for introducing one of his former business partners - Toto Wolff - to Frank Williams and came very close to taking a team principal role at that team. Kolles's company still has a small shareholding in the Williams team today.
So to the point: what is going on at Caterham?
"You have to imagine this team is like a clinically dead patient," says Kolles seriously. "We are the intensive care specialists trying to revitalise it.
"There was no clear structure, no control. A lot of the people there didn't know how to run a small team. It was like dynamite fishing. You throw a lot of dynamite into the sea - it explodes and then you have a lot of dead fish. You do it once - you don't do it again.
"With all respect to Mr Fernandes, he is a successful businessman, but didn't know how to run a small F1 team.
Shnaider with Kolles at the launch of the Midland team in 2006 LAT |
"A lot of it was driven by ego - you see it all over this business - but that's not my interest. I'm just here to turn the team around and make it more efficient."
The new owners of the team are a Swiss-Arab consortium that Kolles has worked with over the past few years on a number of other projects - but he's adamant that their identity must be kept confidential and they are not publicly involved.
"Past experience has proved the pitfalls," he says.
"I repeat, this team is like a patient that is clinically dead. We are trying now to revitalise it. It has a heartbeat and is slowly trying to open its eyes.
"If you have this kind of patient in the hospital, you know the family is also not allowed to be with the doctors during the operation. There will only be disturbances in this respect. We need silence and to do our job correctly.
"When everything is fine, I will disappear and the new owners will come and be presented.
"This is what I have requested personally. It was one of the conditions, because I have seen what has happened in the past.
Huge efforts were required to get HRT on the 2010 grid LAT |
"Mr Shnaider was an honourable man who had good intentions, but was put in a corner, maybe wrongly advised. When journalists asked him whether he would sell the team, he answered: 'everything is for sale'. Then things were written about him saying he wasn't serious about doing F1 - so it went wrong. It was very damaging.
"The next one was Victor Muller [of Spyker] who came in with a big bang announcing Ferrari engines and saying we would be a top team - and what happened? It didn't finish in a positive way from my experience.
"Then we had the third one, Vijay Mallya, where I had to pay photographers to take 300 pictures of him a day... I didn't need this type of disturbance.
"All these personalities are very much ego-driven,including [Jose Ramon] Carabante of HRT. Why did he and his son have to sit on the pitwall with headphones on?
"What is the reason for that? This is just disturbing. For us, we are here just to do a job. That is the reason."
An inevitable side effect of cutting costs to make an F1 team efficient is a reduced headcount, and there has been a public spat between aggrieved former employees and their new management. But Kolles says cutting staff was necessary.
Winkelhock led on his sole F1 start with Spyker at the Nurburgring in 2007 XPB |
"The people who are in the factory know this, too," he adds. "Even the people who had to go knew it was necessary. There is now a simple structure where people have their own responsibilities and their own job descriptions stating very clearly what they have to achieve. There is no discussion about it.
"And it will not be based in Leafield - not at this factory," he continues. "The factory is completely inappropriate for F1. It is wrongly built, too big, too old and not right. We have not purchased this - it is still owned by Fernandes.
"The team will leave. It will still be in the UK; at the moment we don't know where. As soon as the team is stabilised, we will look into this."
Windtunnel updates added to the car from Spa helped Caterham show improved performance early in the second half of the season. The goal is to move up from the bottom of the constructors' standings.
"Maybe we'll finish ahead of Sauber?" suggests Kolles.
"Listen - you never know. You can have a lucky punch even with a slow car. I've had lucky punches in the past with Jordan. In America we finished on the podium in 2005; at the Nurburgring in 2007 we led the race with Markus Winkelhock for Spyker.
"Then Adrian Sutil was fourth at Monaco in 2008, when Kimi Raikkonen crashed into the back of us. Something can always happen..."
With Kolles at the team, you can be assured feathers will be ruffled. Again he smiles, clearly relishing his role as troubleshooter-in-chief. As he once remarked in his HRT days: "If anyone is in my way, they soon get out of it..."
It won't be an easy ride, but as so many people before Tony Fernandes have discovered, just spending money isn't the answer. Spending it wisely is the key to success.
This interview appears in the November issue of F1 Racing, which is now on sale and features a 'showdown special' analysis of the 2014 title race.
