A few years ago, the struggling Force India F1 team was saved by Lawrence Stroll but that completely changed the team but before I talk about that, I will tell you the history of the Force India F1 team. It all began as Jordan F1 and it was the team that gave Formula 1 legend Michael Schumacher his debut in F1, the team Jordan was bought by Midland which turned it into Midland F1 and after that Spyker came in and bought Midland and after that, a controversial guy from India named Vijay Mallya took over and Spyker was renamed to Force India F1. For the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, all of these were the same team. That’s because when the team changed, all that changed was the name of the team and I thinks that’s ok because the staff, building, engine were all the same. So now at the end of 2011, a company called Sahara bought 42.5% of the team and Vijay Mallya owned 42.5% of the team while Michele Mol owned 15% of the team, this was ok but soon the owners were to run into some trouble while the team was doing pretty good in F1. Kingfisher airlines, one of Vijay Mallya’s company collapsed after falling into debts and Indian Banks were after Mallya for up to $1.5 billion in loans. While at Sahara, their director was imprisoned for financial misdeeds and Sahara began drowning in debt and was wanting to sell off some of its assets to get back on track, those assets included its shares in Force India F1. Now, Force India has been struggling financially and in 2015, they were inches from financial collapse and wanted to sell itself. It’s incredible how the team managed to challenge Red Bull while all of this was happening behind the scenes. In 2018, 85% of the shareholders in Force India were in trouble and the team was racking up its own debt to suppliers and employees. Two of them were Sergio Perez and Mercedes-Benz who were owed 3 and 11 million pounds respectively. This is where Sergio Perez and Mercedes push the team into administration. So the team had to come up with a plan to give what it owes back to the people. Then Lawrence Stroll came in and bought everything the team had, including the debts which he promised to pay off. He bought everything to make an F1 team but he didn’t buy the F1 entry. Which meant he named the team Racing Point and replaced one of the drivers, Esteban Ocon with Lawrence’s son, Lance Stroll. I oversimplified this A LOT but you probably get the point. Bye!
Nico Hulkenberg driving the VJM08 around Suzuka, Japan
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