Colin Kolles: The intellectual saviour of F1?

It can be argued that Kolles can only rescue a team which is under a liquidity crunch, and cannot take the team further up the ladder. But it has to be remembered that Kolles was never given an opportunity to continue his progress, and he was cut short when there was a guaranteed sign of movement. It takes considerable time to move up the ladder, as seen in the case of Red Bull, and people often forget the role of time in any evolution. Kolles’s stints at Midland/Spyker/Force India laid the foundations for the team’s growth into what they are now.

Q. “The team has made good progress this year. Do you now have the backing to really move forward?”Kolles: This has been discussed, and there are certain plans and a certain strategy. We will have Mike Gascoyne, who is a future investment, and we will have the wind tunnel upgrade, which has already started. We want to upgrade our performance, and to do this, we will take all the necessary steps.”

Arguably, one of Force India’s best seasons was 2009, which was the last year of Kolles’s involvement. The foundation stone for that season, where the team grabbed a podium on sheer merit and was the fastest car on low downforce circuits, was the work that had put in until that year. The team was rich with several high profile technical staff members including the likes of Mike Gascoyne, James Key, and Mark Smith. Kolles built a brigade of excellent technicians, and as he himself stated, Gascoyne and others were a significant future investment.

That particular 2009 season was the team’s best after their glorious Jordan era. Unfortunately, due to some unknown internal tiff, most of the technicians including Kolles left the team or were sacked. With the rate of progress that Force India showed, it would have been interesting to see what might have happened if that particular brigade of staff along with Kolles had stayed on for a couple of seasons more.

The contribution of Kolles to HRT was even more significant. The team ran on a narrow rope, and its fate was always questioned. Never in the recent history of the sport was such pressure exercised on a team to survive and to perform miracles. HRT under Kolles battled odds, performed exorcist steps, and survived. The technical difficulties were massive, as several technicians were scattered across the globe and were struggling to come under one roof. Yet, the car was reliable, and it didn’t fall apart as expected. Best of all, HRT didn’t take a leaf from the books of Mastercard Lola or the great Andrea Moda. Compared to the likes of Coloni who didn’t even make it to the finish line in 14 Grand Prix of the 81 GP entries, HRT did far better during the 2010 season campaign.

“My role is to clean up the chaos! They had basically nothing, only chaos. The only department which basically exists is a software department, with eight guys who never saw an F1 car in their lives, and who are doing software simulation programmes. Then there are two or three engineers with F1 experience, and that’s it. The real story is a crazy story, you understand. We will have two cars in Bahrain. I don’t know how we will have them, and I don’t care, but we will have two cars on the grid. If this is going to be achieved, I think this is one of the most amazing things, I tell you. They had nothing. They had one empty workshop with nothing inside…” – Kolles

It’s high time for Kolles to get one last chance to redeem his pride. Strong signals coming out of the FIA camp indicate that he is one of the likely aspirants for the 2015 entry slot along with Stefan GP and Stewart-Haas team. Unlike his other stints in Formula 1, this 2015 entry will do justice to his own merit, as he starts from the scratch and doesn’t have to answer to anyone.

Kolles has done it all in Formula 1, and he has even used his dentistry skills on two occasions. Ahead of the 2005 Turkish Grand Prix, Kolles performed a dental operation on Tiago Monteiro, and performed a similar operation on Christijan Albers in 2006. In the recent past, it was also reported that Kolles was set to take over Sauber but the deal failed, and it would have been a different story if Kolles took over an established team and worked his way to the top.

Kolles is truly an Intellectual Savior, but if his name has to find its way in the history books, he probably needs to raise from the ashes, and has to carry a team to glory.