A new team based in Southeast Asia is to apply to join Formula One, with an eye on “disrupting” the sport and hitting the starting grid as early as the 2025-26 season.
The “youth culture-focused” outfit, LKY SUNZ, said it had secured significant investment from the US-based sports fund, Legends Advocates Sports Group, as well as private individuals and businesses in Asia.
According to a statement released on Wednesday, the team plans to submit its application before the FIA’s deadline in May.
Unlike other manufacturers, the new group said it would eventually be “wholly operational outside of Europe”, with a base in Southeast Asia and a commitment to developing close links with inner-city communities across the region, as well as in North America and Africa.
“This demonstrates the team’s commitment to providing under-represented communities opportunities in motorsports,” it said.
It will be run by co-founder Benjamin Durand, a motorsport veteran with experience in sports cars and who was behind the Panthera Team Asia F1 bid.
Durand’s co-founders were also heavily involved in Panthera, with chairman Paul Fleming and Andrew Pyrah both occupying senior roles in the long-standing effort to get the team onto the grid.
The deadline for expression of interest proposals to be submitted to the FIA is May 15, with a deadline of June 30 in place for formal bids to be submitted to F1’s governing body.
Durand said the team’s ethos was to create a fusion of “youth culture and racing” that would disrupt the sport, adding investors shared that vision.
“The sport’s popularity has grown exponentially and every current stakeholder in the sport has been responsible for that, but our guiding principle is to bring something different into the sport to appeal to new audiences,” Durand said.
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“By being the only team operating outside the traditional F1 corridors and developing bespoke programmes to attract talent from under-represented communities, we can bring a diversity of thought yet to be seen in Formula One.
“We of course aim to be competitive on the track but we also commit to entertaining fans off the track. To support our plans, we have already onboarded an impressive team of motorsport executives, music and entertainment industry experts and creatives who will help bring this vision to life.”
The team’s name pays tribute to its origins. LKY is short for lucky, which nods to the Asian heritage of the team, and SUNZ representing the sun, which rises from the east making its way westward.
While cars will initially be built and assembled at a base in Europe, the team aims to build a state-of-the-art net zero green energy-powered factory complex in Southeast Asia by 2025-2026.
Chris Miles, founder of Starting Grid, Inc and Global Motorsports marketing adviser to the African Renaissance and Diaspora Network, an advocacy mechanism to amplify the United Nations’ sustainable development goals, will help the new team forge pathways for under-represented communities within the many facets of motorsports industry through its academies and educational programmes.
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