Right out of the blue comes this statement from Ram Racing!
It is with great regret that Ram Racing announces that it will not be participating in the WEC 6 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps, the second round of the FIA World Endurance Championship.
The team’s two Ferrari 458 Italias – No.52 (Parente/Griffin) in the LMGTE Pro category and No.53 (Mowlem/Collins/Patterson) in LMGTE Am) will not make the trip to Belgium for next weekend’s race due to an unforeseen budget shortfall.
Team Principal Dan Shufflebottom commented: “This decision has been taken after much soul-searching and a massive amount of number-crunching, and has come as a bit of a body blow to us at Ram Racing. We knew when we stepped up to the FIA WEC from the European Le Mans Series that the budgets required would be greatly increased, and we were fully confident that we’d meet our financial targets.
“However, we’re suffering an embarrassing, temporary shortfall and, in order to protect our participation at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and onwards in the FIA WEC, we have taken the difficult decision to not participate at Spa.
“I would like to apologise to our drivers, our suppliers, fans and to the FIA WEC organisers for placing them all in this unenviable position, but sometimes hard decisions have to be made in order to move things forward in a positive way.”
UPDATE
A brief conversation with a very disappointed Dan Shufflebottom this evening revealed that the team’s absence appears to be down to level of season start up cost that was out of step with that which the team anticipated and budgeted for:
“As always there was a very careful exercise undertaken that established our budget around which we planned the payment schedule from our funders.
“Unfortunately there were some substantial costs that we didn’t anticipate, that weren’t readily apparent and whilst some teams may well be in a position to absorb those at short notice, the nature of our funding agreement means that we weren’t able to be as flexible at this point in the year.
“That left us with a blunt choice between going to Spa without all of the required funds in place and risk compromising our run in to Le Mans or opting to miss the race and get things back onto an even keel.
“Fundamentally though it would be a mistake to read this as a lack of willingness from Ram to undertake a full season commitment to WEC, rather it is what I would characterise as a responsible response to a short-term cashflow issue.”
Whilst unwilling to specify where the additional costs emerged from it’s likely to include the substantial five figure ‘rental’ sums that DSC understands have been levied to all teams to pay for the new in -car marshalling system that was trialed at Paul Ricard and Silverstone and which we believe is not yet working to the designed standard.
The withdrawal of any car from an individual round of the WEC meanwhile attracts a fine, per car, and per round, of €30,000. That’s a further cost that the team will have now to absorb.
DSC Says
It’s a huge disappointment that Ram Racing feel they have had to take this choice and miss Spa but there are lessons to be learned beyond the team’s office in SIlverstone.
Whilst Dan was happy to offer that the situation was due to a degree of “new boy naivety”, that’s perhaps too self deprecating an assessment of the situation.
It is surely in the WEC’s best interests to support their teams as fulsomely as possible, they would do well to talk to Ram and listen to Dan’s feedback – This should not just be about a team looking to determine whether their planning and budgeting is up to scratch, it should be about the Championship organisers ensuring that what they require from their customers, and particularly any new customers, is as clear as possible and as early as possible in that process.
