Kolles: My role is to clean up the chaos

Newly appointed Campos Meta team boss Colin Kolles admits his first job at the fledgling Formula One team is to "clean up the chaos."

Campos Meta is one of four newcomers to this year's Formula One grid but, up until late last week, the team's future was on the line due largely to financial issues.

However, on Friday last week, the team announced that their future had been secured after chief shareholder José Ramón Carabante took control of the outfit. One of his first tasks was appointing former Force India team boss Kolles to the same position at Campos.

Kolles, though, faces a race against time in order to ensure that Campos Meta is ready when the season gets underway in Bahrain next month.

"For two weeks I'm sleeping two hours a night," he told F1 journalist Adam Cooper, published at adamcooperf1.com. "It's the most incredible time.

"I push more and more, and I'm not giving it up until I'm there. I want to succeed in bringing the team on the grid, and to survive the year and to stabilise it and then to build it up.

"It will be based in Spain as an HQ, but for now we will operate from Dallara, for the first race, and we'll see. At mid-term it will definitely be in Spain. The team will be based in Murcia. We have to build up a state-of-the-art factory, wind tunnel and everything.

"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...

"There are things which will be last, last minute, because to form a team in two weeks is not easy. It's only possible because I have the infrastructure. I have people working for me like Mike Krack, who was chief engineer at BMW for example. Geoff Willis is a kind of consultant at the moment, and we'll see how we proceed with him.

"I have a big network, but this is the smallest problem, the mechanics and engineers and so on. This is almost sorted out already. There are other issues. You have to find agreements with Cosworth, Dallara, Xtrac, all the other suppliers, discussions with drivers, with Bernie (Ecclestone). You have to eliminate the 'race-stoppers,' that's the point."

The team also still has to sign a second driver as at present only Bruno Senna has a contract with Campos. But as finance remain at issue, Kolles admits that the team will most likely take on a paying driver.

"It's very clear that we need a budget to rescue the team," he said. "At Jordan [in 2005] we also had to start with pay drivers, and then it developed. After four years you have full professional drivers. When the team is performing and the team is efficient, then it is on a second page."

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