Lotus is British and moving away from the UK will do nothing but weaken its brand it amazes me that a business man thinks he can just transplant Lotus to another country. Its not going to happen it will be a name with no substance.

If he’s such a “class operator”, please explain the team’s total lack of success under his leadership.

Please also explain the total failure of the team to attract sponsors.

For 4 years in a row.

Despite winning both Championships this year.

Please also explain how, as CEO, he failed to see these problems occurring and fix them. If the Marketing Director is failing, it’s the job of the CEO to fire and replace him. He hasn’t fixed that problem for 4 years now.

Fry is many things. Highly rated in the paddock, and a class operator, are not among them.

nick fry in his position, even if it was not his main job day to day, must take at least some responsibility for the pathetically poor sponporship that his team has had to endure for the last few years including this one. he is off soon i believe to address a sponsorship forum in abu dhabi, so he certainly thinks he knows something about it even if you don’t think he should.

with regard to the buy-out, whatever the timings of exactly what happened, the fact is that the main person who was seeking and vetting potential buyers also had an eye out for getting the team for himself. This to me is a fairly clear conflict of interest, and he should have removed himself from the position of trying to sell the team. we also have no idea how involved fry was in the recent mercedes take-over.

lastly, the way he allowed super aguri to disintegrate at a time when they were embarassing their parent team and getting results way beyond there meagre budget was also incredibly disappointing.

by the way, mod, i thought your censorship of my mild description was a little harsh, but having seen that fry set his lawyers on pitpass to get various articles removed, i guess it’s fair!

Honda’s micro-management no doubt interered with Fry’s ability to do what he really needed to do, ultimately culmintating in a dog of a car and the resultant unwillingness of people to sponsor Honda.

I agree with you Re: Jenson. We don’t know if that was Nick Fry, Ross Brawn or Mercedes pulling the strings on that. Either way, it was poorly thought out and an own goal.

Being one of the main people looking to sign up new investors for the ex-Honda team, telling us all that there were numerous serious interested parties. strangely enough, no investment offers were accepted by Mr Fry,

Wrong. He lined up a takeover by Mercedes. Ross got on with the engineering, told Fry what he wanted to happen and he made it happen.

but instead he became one of the management team who lead the buy-out.

Wrong. The team buyout was *BEFORE* the team was ex-Honda. The way you’ve written it, it was after.

I don’t know Nick Fry, I haven’t met him. I have no connections with him. I’m just an observer.

You don’t get to be CEO of a company like this without knowing what you are doing. And you certainly don’t get to keep the job through a management buyout and then through a takeover unless people rate you. The normal course is that during a takeover the MD/CEO is the first to go- the new owners want their own people running the show. That one simple fact tells you all you should need to know. Whether you like him or loathe him, he is a class operator.

I imagine in years to come, Christian Horner will be regarded this way, if he is not already.

Utter nonesense. Unless he has 50% or more voting rights (not necessarily same as 50% share holding) he cannot demand any position he wants. That means the only reason he has the position is because he merits it.

As for the sponsorship comments – that is the responsibility of the marketing director.

Most company takeovers result in the MD (or CEO in this case) losing his job. On the occasions the CEO keeps their job that is an outstanding sign that the new owners of the business value the MD/CEO. Clearly Mercedes do.

you’d be happy with this [mod] working for you? i wouldn’t…