“The whole cavalcade of publicity surrounding it on the same day that you have
made the employees redundant is a disgrace.”
Staff received an email on Friday evening saying that they were being made
redundant from 1MRT, the company which holds the license for the race entry.
O’Connell told Telegraph Sport that the “vast majority” of
employees asked to be made redundant and that the timing was “purely
coincidental”.
He said: “They told me they can only last without cash for so long, so we had
approaches saying they must make us redundant. It’s what the vast majority
of the employees wanted. It’s a twin track approach. If the team is bought,
then they will re-hire the staff made redundant. If it is not, then they
will be a few weeks into the government process for claiming money.”
There are tentative plans to take out a mass law suit against Tony Fernandes,
the Queens
Park Rangers owner, who sold the team to a group of Swiss and Middle
Eastern investors earlier this year. There is also a suggestion that the
administrator, Caterham are already in a bitter legal dispute with 40
employees who were laid off when the team was sold in July.
The email to staff read: “We promised at the staff meeting held at Leafield on
31 October that by today [Friday] we would try to provide some certainty one
way or another for the employees. We have also had numerous requests from
staff that they be made redundant as soon as possible. We are therefore
making all of the 1MRT employees formally redundant with immediate effect.”
It is not clear in what state Caterham will make it to Abu Dhabi. O’Connell,
who has become the self-styled team principal, claims the objective is to
showcase Caterham to help secure a buyer. But the car has not been developed
for weeks, with the factory locked at certain points, and they currently
have no confirmed drivers.
Britain’s Joylon Palmer, the current GP2 champion, had been in the fray but
elected to complete the last race of the GP2 series. Andre Lotterer, the
three-time Le Mans winner, who raced for Caterham in Belgium, told Autosport
magazine he has been approached to take up the drive but may decline the
offer.
Caterham’s crowdfunding initiative – whereby fans give donations in exchange
for rewards, such as an old race suit, wheel nuts, and even dinner with one
of the drivers – has been controversial from its inception. It was not lost
on seasoned observers that the company behind the project – ‘Crowdcube’ –
are a client of the team’s administrators, Smith Williamson.