The new faces of motor-racing: the sheikh and the African trader

Think Formula 1 and it’s not long before a short man with a terrible haircut and an unfeasibly tall wife comes to mind. But while Bernie Ecclestone is very much the face of the world’s premier motor-racing series, it’s a different story with A1 Grand Prix. This weekend the upstart rival to Formula 1 will be staging demonstration races in Manchester to promote the alternative high-octane racing series it holds in the Formula 1 off-season, the northern hemisphere winter.

A1 has a short but intriguing history. It was inaugurated last year by one of the younger members of Dubai’s ruling family and a controversial South African entrepreneur who made a small fortune from a transport company in the post-apartheid era. The royal backer is Sheikh Maktoum Hasher Maktoum Al Maktoum, a nephew of Sheikh Mohamed, crown prince of Dubai, and his partner is Tony Teixeira, president of a large energy and precious stones company called Energem.

The two seem an unlikely pairing. In his late twenties, Sheikh Maktoum is a relatively inexperienced businessmen who claims to speak seven languages, including French and Urdu, but is in love with the glamour of the motor-racing circuit in much the same way that his uncle adores horse racing. Teixeira, meanwhile, is a tough-talking South African who, since graduating from his home market, has established himself as a player on a bigger stage.

Both had high hopes for A1 in the run-up to its launch. In October 2004 Sheikh Maktoum said, ‘I believe that in the long term we’ll see a bigger audience than Formula 1. I believe we’ll break into the US market, plus Japan, Pakistan, India, Malaysia — there’s huge untapped potential there.’ He has also been quoted as saying the enterprise would be worth £2 billion at the end of its second year. His thinking was that fans were becoming tired of a form of racing that relied more on the engineering of the car than on the skill of the driver, a view apparently borne out by the fact that so many Formula 1 races were proving to be processions led by Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari.