Former Minardi owner Paul Stoddart has submitted an entry for an F1 team in the 2008 championship. Stoddart sold the rights to his F1 franchise last year to Red Bull boss Dietrich Mateschitz, who renamed the team Scuderia Toro Rosso in 2006.
However, Stoddart says he retained the rights to the Minardi name and the intellectual property rights to the PS04 cars build in 2004.
"I've lodged myself an entry as European Minardi F1 team Limited," Stoddart tells Reuters.
"We've got the cars we ran in Melbourne last year, we've got the team and we've got the facility," he added.
Stoddart admits the entry might be a long shot, depending on how many teams file an entry by the end of this week.
If the current 11 teams all submit an entry - which is likely at this point - then that would leave just one opening under the 2008 proposals approved by the World Motor Sport Council last week. FIA president Max Mosley has indicated that three to four groups have expressed interest in entering a team under the new cost-cutting rules.
Stoddart, who was a thorn in Mosley's side when he was an F1 owner, says being away from the sport is much harder than he expected.
"I miss it, and I miss it badly," he tells The Age newspaper in Australia. "I would like to think that all kinds of opportunities could be there, if not in '06 or '07 but in '08."
Despite the fact that Stoddart would get back into the sport under new rules crafted by his nemesis aimed at independent teams entering F1, he is still critical of the way Mosley has gone about pushing through changes.
"I am kind of sad to see that the politics are worse than they have everbeen at any time," Stoddart said. "I had hoped we would get to a point where we would see a new Concorde Agreement signed and unity between the independents and the manufacturers and Bernie Ecclestone and the banks but sadly at this time, we have Mad Max (Mosley) back in charge."
Stoddart, who made his fortune in the aviation business, recently suspended operation of his business airline Oz Jet less than four months after launching the service in Australia.
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