By Huw Alban
August 17 2002

After talking confidently of purchasing the Arrows team, Craig Pollock has now changed tack. The reason for his change of heart appears to be the team’s decision to heed legal advice and not attend the Hungarian Grand Prix this weekend.

At the time of writing there has been no news about a penalty from the FIA for Arrows not attending this weekend’s race. However, Pollock is worried that the Leafield team may lose the support of the rest of the grid.

“Not being in the paddock is a huge complication, because you are in breach of your agreements with all the other teams,” said Pollock yesterday in Hungary.

“If you are buying anything within this paddock, you want to have the absolute agreement of the sport. In theory, you can have two races where you do not participate and you pay the promoter a fine, but I don’t think it would be a very clever thing to do because I think you would lose the support of the paddock.”

“Tom is currently negotiating with three parties, and one of those is the consortium that I’ve put together. At this moment there is no agreement. Tom is claiming that this is a case of Force Majeure, however I always believed that this was what happened if your trucks caught fire or there was flooding. I will be talking to Bernie later today to clarify the situation.”

“I think it has to be done pretty fast because the team is not in the paddock and not being in the paddock is a huge complication,” Pollock continued.

“I would like to think we are ahead but you can never know. At one stage I said I was 80 per cent confident, but today it is very difficult to say because this (the Arrows absence) complicates the situation tremendously.”

The other potential problem that Arrows face is the possibility of a compensation claim from the organisers of the Hungarian Grand Prix, because they were promised 22 competitors. If this claim is substantial then the money ‘saved’ by the team may not actually be saved.