That's why I was sceptical at the time, but the pieces of the jigsaw fit. So there may have been some truth in it all along. As only one party has given any indication of what happened, we may never know. Longbow has always been a quiet partner, not prone to publicity themselves.
From a chronological point of view, in terms of what appeared in the media (which I accept is never going to be the full picture)....Andretti approached Longbow....we hear a deal is nearly done, ready to be signed....we hear an announcement will be made at the USGP and that Colton Herta may drive in free practise with a view to racing in the future.....then we hear there may be a stumbling block....we also hear rumours that Andretti might want to replace a lot of the technical staff....Michael Andretti personally flies to the Longbow people to talk.....we hear nothing much over the USGP weekend.....then we hear the deal is off, with Andretti shortly thereafter saying it failed over issues regarding "control" of the team.
Perhaps we're putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with 5 but it fits.
The timeline fits, and would explain why Andretti might have felt that the goalposts had been moved at the last minute whilst Longbow might have felt that they were doing the right thing in the face of some Americans' heartless commerciality.
Two things that, at least on the surface, do not quite fit in that scenario:
- Although as stated above it is possible to have ownership structures in which one party has the majority of the economic interest and prospective returns whilst a completely different party has control of all important leadership and operating decisions, it is the exception not the rule. Surely the Longbow team (including professional advisors) would have known from the beginning that anyone buying the majority economic interest in a Formula One team would expect thereby to have control over the team's operating decisions. That issue would never have been thought at the start to be merely a minor detail and then ingenuously mentioned at the last minute.
- It is inconceivable that the Longbow people know more about how to run a racing team than the Andrettis know. If the Andrettis wanted to make wholesale changes by replacing the bulk of the existing Sauber staff with 'Andretti people' (a speculation that I do not credit, but it is possible), would Longbow actually have responded, 'We understand Formula One better than you do and we cannot accept that because it would be bad for the team'?
Perhaps the most likely explanation is that, as the implications of the sale began to dawn on the team's owners, and in response to speculation that Andretti was going to replace the team's senior management (which is far more believable than the idea that Andretti was going to replace the entire staff) Longbow was getting lobbied hard by that senior management to protect their positions, Longbow's owners had a change of heart. That is to say, at the beginning they had not thought through the whole thing, the negotiations soon took on a momentum of their own, and it was only at the last minute that Longbow's owners realised what they should have known all along.
