Motor racing - Fernandes sells Caterham GP2 team
LONDON (Reuters) - Malaysian aviation entrepreneur Tony Fernandes has followed up the sale of the Caterham Formula One team by offloading his GP2 outfit to Canadian-based businessman Teddy Yip's Status Grand Prix.
The sale will see Caterham Racing, which competes in the feeder series to Formula One, leave the Caterham F1 factory in central England and relocate to Silverstone before being renamed next season.
"We have always had the ambition to move further up the motorsport ladder when the time is right," said Yip, whose late Indonesian-born father was the force behind the Macau F3 grand prix and owner of the Theodore F1 team in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
"The opportunity to take over an established and highly-regarded GP2 team such as Caterham Racing, allied to a strong season in GP3, makes that time now," he added in a statement.
Status Grand Prix has won races in the GP3 series, a rung below GP2, while Indonesian driver Rio Haryanto is one of Caterham Racing's current drivers.
Fernandes sold his F1 team in July to a secretive consortium of investors but kept the GP2 operation, which shared the same factory.
The AirAsia chief executive, and chairman of struggling English Premier League soccer club Queens Park Rangers, still owns a motorcycle team competing in the Moto2 series.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Ed Osmond)
