As NASA will confirm, Virgin founder Richard Branson has never been one to be constrained by industries he knows nothing about or high barriers to entry, but his interest in owning a Formula One team has raised a few eyebrows.
The man who has created trains, planes, media, mobile phones, online services, music, wine sales and holidays that bear his brand’s name recently said that Virgin would be “interested in getting involved” if the sport’s supremo, Bernie Ecclestone, could make it more clean and cost effective.
Unlike most owners, Virgin would have no technology to exchange with a motor team, so it is thought that Branson’s interest is based on marketing. As an unrepentant self-publicist, that’s something he never tires of, as anyone who saw Piers Morgan’s enjoyable of slightly fatuous ITV profile of him on Sunday night will testify.
The punitive costs of running a Formula One team, as well as the poor environmental profile of the sport, would appear to make it a poor fit for the Virgin empire.
"I think if Bernie Ecclestone can make it more cost effective for the likes of Virgin to come into that sport, and if he can champion clean motor car racing - which is possible to do by making sure all the cars run on clean fuels - then at some stage we might be interested in getting involved," Branson told the BBC.
While rumours that he was about to purchase the Honda team, which was put up for sale in December, went cold, when he says he “loves Formula One” and that “it could do with a brand like Virgin” you know he’s serious about his involvement.
Several bidders were linked to the team, including Virgin, a management buyout consortium, and most fancifully, a Facebook group that aimed to raise the money by attracting 40,000 members all willing to pay £100 each, but Honda had initially said it had failed to find a “serious buyer”.
The latest news is that Honda is in fact close to a deal, with the team expected to test a new vehicle this week, as clear a sign as any that it will continue racing. But Branson might have to keep his powder dry; while there were no official details of the buyer, rumours abound that a management buyout led by Ross Brawn will be successful.
I don’t doubt the merits or industry experience of Brawn’s management team, but for all Branson’s faults – and there are plenty of them if you believe even half of Tom Bower’s barbed biography, which portrays him as a devious actor – I genuinely think he would be good news for an ailing sport. For all his buccaneering extravagance, as a privateer rather than a manufacturer, he would bring common sense to F1, which for too long has been removed from reality. And at the very least, he’d know how to give it a marketing and PR boost.