Caterham administrator claims to have three potential buyers and gives them a deadline

Finbarr O'Connell, the administrator of the Caterham F1 team has said that he is talking to three potential buyers but warned them that they would need to put pen to paper before the end of January if they are going to race this year.

"One of those interested is a billionaire who would come into F1 for himself and to promote his products, whilst the other two are in the automotive industry," O'Connell told Press Association's Ian Parkes. "People who have the wherewithal if they decided to go ahead. But it's a tough investment decision. Formula One is so expensive and there is not a line of people queueing to get in. There are only a very limited number of parties who can afford to get into it.

"These people can all do it, and I would like them to move quicker because there is a limited period of time. But if you are spending £100million you are not going to buy it and rush in at the end and do a half-baked season for 2015. People who are spending that amount of money per season want to do it completely properly.

"My view is we have this month and that's it. It might slip into next month, but only if final details are being resolved."

O'Connell managed to get the team to compete in the final round of the 2014 Championship as a shop window for the team after it went into administration, missing the US and Brazilian Grands Prix. The staff were laid off and many will have found new employment already. The new F1 season is only ten weeks away while winter testing starts at the beginning of February.

A new buyer potentially has the option of getting a dispensation to run 2014 engines, which would save money, but would harm competitiveness.

But as O'Connell says, the challenge is that even at that level this is a massive investment and the chances of success are relatively slim, given the difficulties both Caterham and Marussia had in scoring points. Caterham was operating on a budget of around £80 million a season and Marussia about £50 million.

That said, Dietrich Mateschitz is a billionaire who bought a small F1 team for himself and to promote his Red Bull products just nine years ago, at a time when F1 and its budgets, were dictated by manufacturer-backed teams. He invested heavily in the team and managed not only to do very well on track, but also to gain tremendous leverage with the FIA and Commercial Rights Holder in a short period of time, to the point where his team, Red Bull Racing, has one of the loudest voices in F1 and gets the second highest payment from F1's commercial pot, after Ferrari. So it can be done.

But with engine supplies at north of $20 million per season, little sign of any meaningful progress on cost control and with the smaller independent teams convinced that there is an agenda to get them out of the sport so the leading five teams can run satellite or B team operations, there is a lot of uncertainty.

And uncertainty is the mortal enemy of investors, not just in F1, but in any kind of investment.