Aug.08.2002
"Dome F1 Adventure Behind The Scene Story"- Episode 3
Episode 3 "San Dolino" in Brompton Road　
The amount of money to buy Tyrell, which did not have good facilities, was not that much but it was enough to rent a factory (same scale as Benneton used to have) and carry out the project. That means it was well over 6 billion yen. The kind of budget was used by teams as well off as Benetton.

　I explained the outline of DOME || COLUMN and our F1 project plan to Marick. We met to have further discussion before I flew back to Japan the following day and we had lunch at Hilton Hotel. Marco had left for Italy the day before. I hadn't seen Marco for a long time but he was a kind of person I could openly talk about the progress of our F1 project plan with, and the difficulties I was facing in the closed F1 society. As Bridgestone announced their F1 launch right before our F105 launch in 1996, the negotiations with Goodyear Tires almost went on nowhere as people suspected why all Nippon teams didn't have BS tires. I had to go to the opening round in Melbourne to keep the negotiations with Goodyear Tires again. We received the tires from them later but what we could use for Time Attack was a-year old D compound which was used in Hockenheim……

　Next day Marick took us to an Italian restaurant called "San Dolino" in Brompton Street and we talked more about the project. I felt a bit positive about England as the food there was good, and I thought I could survive to carry out the F1 project in this country if the standard of food was getting better. The first restaurant the partner-to- be chose for our meeting was "San Dolino" and it was a good restaurant which meant a lot to me. Although an investors group was likely to help the fund to set up the team first, maintaining a stable income for F1 team was always an issue. It seemed Marick had some marketing plans already but I had to discuss more in details. All the names he listed up for our sponsors or partners were very famous and glamorous, and there was even a close friend of Adrian Reynard. I thought we should be really careful as the list sounded rather we were confronted by cutthroat competition. It was very hard to judge as I could not totally deny the possibility although we would definitely have lots of difficulties. I then decided to consult with President. He told me, "if we are not taking any risks, go ahead with it but pull out before we get into trouble" so I decided to hang on to the negotiation.

　Marick had tried to return to F1 business with Lotus before he failed to buy Tyrell. He was involved in the collaboration of Proton and Lotus, and seemed to have strong relationships with companies such as Petronas in Malaysia which was a sponsor for Sauber , Petrobras in Brasil which was a sponsor for Williams, thanks to his oil business background and he seemed to have tried and figured out how he could be in F1 business. Despite his efforts in the past years, he failed to buy Tyrell and the fact could not keep the financial groups on his side any more. Marick was desperate to have a F1 debut in 1999.
I tried to persuade him to have a debut in 2000 instead as we hadn't prepared enough for 1999 and we did not even decided the engine but he would not listen and insisted that he had agreed with Barney Ecreston to start in 1999. I understood his situation but we could not start without the engine. We finally agreed that Marick would come to Japan to talk with Honda and Mugen directly and find solutions with the help from them. On the other hand, I had to keep a Supertech engine, the only one we could get so far. We needed to sort out things urgently.

Tadashi Sasaki