Thursday March 28th, 2002

British American Racing co-founder Adrian Reynard's Reynard Motorsport announced on Thursday that his company has been placed into receivership with immediate effect.

Recent efforts to recapitalise the company did not reach expected levels and without further financial investment the company were left with no alternative.

Staff losses will number over 100 people, although the company will continue under the management of receivers for the immediate future.

"It is the worst day of my business life and in the history of the company," Reynard said. "Reynard has had so much success over the last three decades and I'm devastated that it has ended this way, but we had no choice."

"It has been a combination of factors which has led to our situation today. Our aborted float on the US Stock Exchange, which put a strain on our financial resources, and the subsequent changes in the US autoracing market are just some of the influences on the downturn in fortunes of the company.

"Reynard has suffered from several management changes and strategy shifts over the past three years and it eventually found itself in two of the wrong market places at the wrong time, having invested huge amounts of money in those products. I had hoped that we could retrieve the situation, but sadly we were not able to achieve this."

Reynard Motorsport was founded by Adrian Reynard in 1973 and grew to a multi-million pound company, with success in F3, F3000 and the American CART Championship.

Adrian Reynard had regained the leadership of the company at the start of 2002 after Rick Gorne stepped down as chief executive. Both Gorne and Reynard were involved in the launch of the BAR Formula One team in 1999, while the latter still owns a stake in the Brackley-based team.

Reynard Motorsport was originally formed by Adrian Reynard in 1973, and since its foundation, had won more than 150 motor racing championships world-wide, including successive CART titles from 1995 to 1999 as well as the Indianapolis 500.

Published at 18:21:55 GMT