MOTORSPORT: Another V8 Supercar head goes

V8 Supercars has lost another off-track leader.

The organisation that runs Australasia’s major motor racing championship has had a rapid succession of chief executives and chairmen in recent years.

The latest to go is Rishabh Mehrotra, the chairman since last year through being a partner of Archer Capital, the Sydney-based private equity company that is the majority owner of the V8 Supercar business.

Unknown to the public and largely to the racing fraternity, Mehrotra was sighted being introduced to V8 Supercar team members at Melbourne’s Sandown 500 in mid-September.

But just days after the biggest event of the year, the Bathurst 1000, his departure has been reported in the Australian Financial Review newspaper’s Street Talk column today.

It said Mehrotra’s exit “comes as industry sources suspect Archer Capital may be cooking up a deal for its 60 per cent stake” in V8 Supercars.

Archer has been working on a plan to acquire the rest of the V8 Supercar business, most of which is in the hands of the team owners.

Its plan has involved paying those team owners, holders of the Racing Entitlement Contracts (RECs) under which cars compete in the V8 Supercar Championship, a dividend of $450,000 a season for the six years of the new television contract for the series.

Within the terms of that contract, Fox Sports and Foxtel predominantly and the Ten network are to pay $241 million for the rights to telecast the series until 2020. The deal involves $196 million cash, with the rest in contra advertising.

Fox will screen all V8 Supercar practice, qualifying and racing live for the next six years, with six events a season – including the Bathurst 1000 – to be simulcast on Ten, which will screen packaged highlights of the other championship rounds.

It is not yet clear whether or how Mehrotra’s departure might affect the Archer plan to acquire the rest of the V8 Supercar business. It bought the bulk of its stake 3½ years ago for $180 million, putting a value on the entire business of $300 million at that time.

V8 Supercars has undergone major changes since then, including the departure of long-time executive chairman Tony Cochrane and the switch to new-generation V8 Supercars, which has enticed Nissan, Mercedes' AMG and Volvo into the sport.

Martin Whitaker, an Englishman with vast Formula One experience, promptly came and went as chief executive even before Cochrane’s exit.

Then TV executive David Malone filled the chief executive’s chair for about a year before James Warburton, another TV executive who had been the sales chief at the Seven network and chief executive at Ten for a year, replaced him 18 months ago – and is still there.

James Strong, who had headed Qantas and been chairman of Woolworths, took on the chairman’s role at V8 Supercars after Cochrane, although in a non-executive capacity. Soon after assuming that position Strong became ill and died in early March 2013 after surgery.

Mehrotra joined Archer Capital as a partner last year and the private equity company promptly installed him as the chairman of V8 Supercars some months after Strong’s death. Archer’s website said Mehrotra had 15 years of operating experience with leading US private equity and venture funds and six years of strategic consulting experience.

One of the New York-based private equity firms with which he had been involved had $15 billion under management – five times the size of Archer Capital.

His education had included a master of business administration (MBA) from Harvard Business School. He was a former McKinsey & Co consultant, in which role he had focused on growth strategies and mergers and acquisitions, and he was a co-founder of a San Francisco software company.

Meanwhile, the V8 Supercars Commission has dropped a fuel regulation – reintroduced on the eve of this year’s endurance race season – ahead of next week’s Gold Coast 600.

The commission had stipulated a minimum number of fuel stops per car for the Sandown and Bathurst enduros and a minimum fuel drop of 550mm in each of the Gold Coast’s two 300km races.

Those regulations were intended as a parity measure for the four-valve engined Nissans, Erebus Mercedes and Volvos against the older-tech but traditionally more fuel-efficient Holdens and Fords, but the commission has now dropped its rule for the event on the streets of Surfers’ Paradise.