What's the Racing Point?

After a month of speculation, the future of the racing team formerly known as Sahara Force India has been revealed. Points-less, and under a new name – but with the same bright pink livery – the Silverstone racers have been reborn as Racing Point Force India.

There were some chuckles in the press room when a scan of Companies House records revealed that Racing Point are based within a stone’s throw of the new Formula 1 offices in central London. Both entities share a St James address (one Place, one Market), and any back and forth between F1’s new team owners and the owners of the sport itself could have been achieved via the can and string ‘telephones’ kids used to play with back in the 20th century.

Racing Point is actually two entities – Racing Point UK Limited and Racing Point UK Holdings Limited – both of which were incorporated on 2 August 2018.

Much has been made of the ‘consortium’ that took over what was Sahara Force India, but during the Budapest weekend there were paddock mutterings that there was no consortium at all, that the entity was a front for a takeover by Lawrence Stroll. 

Companies House records indicate that the rumour mill may well have been correct – of the four original Racing Point directors, only two remain: Stroll and ‘Silas’ Kei Fong Chou, a Hong Kong-based businessman whose other corporate interests lie in fashion brands including Tommy Hilfiger and Michael Kors. Eric Michael Tinholt den Besten and Edward William Porter were both appointed to the board on 2 August, and both men had resigned inside a week.

Last man standing Chou and Stroll have been business partners for years. The pair invested in Tommy Hilfiger in the 1990s, and then continued their partnership into the 21st century with a shared investment in Asprey & Garrard. It was via Hilfiger and Kors that Stroll cemented his position on the world’s rich lists, and it was with Chou that he made the money. 

It is not unusual that the two would choose to continue a working relationship that had proved to be so mutually beneficial, but it is unusual that they would move from the proven gains of the fashion sphere to a world in which the best way to make a small fortune is to start with a large one. 

While the involvement of Stroll Sr. can be easily explained by a racing father living vicariously through his son – a man of means keen to give his son everything his heart might desire, including an F1 team – Chou is less easy to explain. A man well-versed in international business and the art of making money has to have found a reason to be involved. What that reason might be is not yet clear. 

But there is much about Racing Point that lacks clarity on the surface. 

Drilling down into the certificate of incorporation for Racing Point UK Holdings Ltd, there is only one person named as a person with significant control (or someone holding 75 percent or more of the shares). Where RPUKH Ltd is concerned, only one share has been issued, and its holder – one Omar Ariss, of Monaco – is the sole holder. 

Ariss is the director of Monaco Sports and Management, a position he has held since 2010. According to their website, Monaco Sports and Management is “a management advisory firm that typically serves high-net-worth clients and their families. We offer a complete outsourced solution to managing finances, accounts, cash flow, company secretarial, acquisitions, expatriate residence, offshore trusts, tax planning, asset purchases, insurance, sponsorship, property management, philanthropic foundations, wealth transfer and other bespoke services.”

When the team previously known as Force India issued a press release on Thursday evening explaining that they had been acquired by Racing Point, they name-check both Chou and Monaco Sports and Management, but make no mention of Ariss and his significant control. 

Also mentioned – although not included on Companies House listings – are “Andre Desmarais, Jonathan Dudman of Monaco Sports and Management, fashion business leader John Idol, telecommunications investor John McCaw Jr, [and] financial expert Michael de Picciotto.”

The number of financiers involved is ominous. While Bob Fernley may have been too much of Vijay Mallya’s man to stay the course, Fernley was a passionate and committed racer, one of many at Force India. It is down to the excellent stewarding of the team by the proper racers in the factory and among senior management that Force India were repeatedly able to punch above their weight in the financial stakes.

But as Formula One learned to its own chagrin during the devastating CVC Capital Partners years, financiers have little interest in growing anything except the size of their own money pots.

It will be a travesty if Force India are saved from certain death at the eleventh hour, only to suffer a long slow bleed out at the hands of those with their eyes on the bottom line, not the finish line.