This Fake Saudi Arabian Prince Wooed Tyrrell’s Method 1 Crew With Cash That Did not Exist

Sulaiman Al-Kehaimi confirmed up within the Method 1 paddock for the 1996 Monaco Grand Prix with aptitude. He threw a large race-weekend half in a mansion — stated to be attended by none apart from Cher herself — and promised a struggling Crew Tyrrell that, as a Saudi Arabian prince, he had the cash to purchase a controlling stake within the destitute crew. Besides, he wasn’t a prince in any respect, and Tyrrell lastly succumbed to failure.

(Editor’s observe: This week marks the discharge of Racing with Wealthy Vitality: How a Rogue Sponsor Took Method One for a Experience by Elizabeth Blackstock and Alanis King. To have fun a guide that started as a weblog on Jalopnik, co-author Blackstock is protecting the historical past of a few of F1’s different questionable sponsors. These sponsors are touched on within the guide, however not in depth. Racing with Wealthy Vitality is accessible through McFarland, Amazon, Kindle, and Eurospan for worldwide patrons.)

The Tyrrell crew possesses probably the most fascinating tales in racing historical past. After realizing he wasn’t a racer, Ken Tyrrell used a eager eye for racing expertise to start out fielding promising drivers within the decrease divisions of Method 3 and Method Junior. Even after partnering up with Elf, Ford, and Matra to interrupt into F1, Tyrrell maintained a woodshed as his major locus of operation — and it was in that woodshed that the crew ready a World Championship successful automobile for Jackie Stewart.

The crew was largely a household operation, and it started to fall by the wayside within the mid-Eighties. Ken Tyrrell simply couldn’t afford to develop the turbo engines that had been taking F1 by storm, leaving the crew as the ultimate one utilizing the once-revolutionary Cosworth DFV. The prognosis remained grim into the Nineties, regardless of a number of podiums.

Enter Sulaiman Al-Kehaimi. This man swept into the Method 1 paddock with the promise of a royal Saudi Arabian lineage and claimed he supposed to purchase a 51 p.c stake in Tyrrell on the 1996 Monaco Grand Prix. He hosted a lavish celebration at a $50 million chateau within the south of France and invited celebrity friends — together with Cher — that he helicoptered to and from the observe. His curiosity within the struggling Tyrrell appeared virtually too good to be true, however the crew was prepared to barter.

In contrast to among the different sponsorship or possession tales we’ve written about right here on Jalopnik, this wasn’t something of the type. In actual fact, Al-Kehaimi’s schtick actually solely lasted for a number of race weekends in 1996 earlier than he moved on to different targets, leaving Tyrrell reeling because it tried to search out sufficient cash to proceed to the following season. Now, the crew was not simply poor however embarrassed in addition.

Al-Kehaimi, for his personal half, ended up being nothing however the son of an ambassador, not a prince. He was additionally, in 1998, taken to courtroom on prices procuring invaluable securities by deception, tried deception, and theft. Al-Kehaimi was cleared of all prices.

On the finish of the 1997 season, Ken Tyrrell was drained. He offered off the crew to Craig Pollock, who was additionally build up British American Racing, and left the crew quickly after resulting from disagreements with Pollock for selecting Ricardo Rosset and his ample sponsorship cash as a major driver versus Tyrrell’s alternative Jos Verstappen.

Tyrrell chugged by way of that remaining 1998 season with out scoring a single level. Its remaining race could be that 12 months’s Japanese Grand Prix, through the course of which Rosset did not qualify whereas his teammate Tora Takagi retired on lap 28 after a collision.

Ken Tyrrell died in August of 2001, having suffered from most cancers and quickly declining well being throughout his final years in motorsport. However among the Tyrrell legacy nonetheless lives on in trendy F1. Whereas BAR purchased the Tyrrell crew and entry, it offered Tyrrell’s tools to Paul Stoddart, who took over the Minardi F1 crew. In a fancy internet of gross sales and acquisitions, Tyrrell in the end turned Brawn GP and the present Mercedes F1 crew.

For the Tyrrell title, although, it’s too little too late, and the downward spiral was solely exacerbated by a pretend sheikh.