An explorer of abandoned site has shared images of the current state of the Caterham F1 Team’s factory at Leafield in the United Kingdom.
Under the name of ‘Khurbanx’, an explorer of abandoned sites in the UK, recently visited the Leafield Technical Center, which was once the home of the Tony Fernandes-led Caterham F1 Team – the outfit which went into administration in 2014.
The administrators tried to sell off the place but its been nearly six years now with no takers. In fact, Leafield wasn’t Caterham’s original headquarter as it initially started their work at Hingham, Norfolk. The abandoned factory ekes a sorry state of affairs.
Vandals have broken into the facility and have not only taken up anything salvageable but have used it to spray paint for their pleasure. The team started it journey under the name of Lotus Racing/Team Lotus from 2010 F1 season onward.
It got entangled in a legal battler over the ‘Lotus’ name and eventually changed to Caterham from 2012 F1 season onward but its financial troubles continued. Having went into administration, the team tried running under crowd-source scheme.
It did compete in 2014 Abu Dhabi GP as well but that was their last as over the winter of 2014-15, the F1 team finally folded up despite having featured in the FIA entry list for the 2015 season. Caterham were one of the three outfits to have suffered the most.
They came in with Virgin Racing and Hispania Racing but none survived, with these F1 teams also becoming Marussia/Manor and HRT, respectively, before folding up. Before Caterham, Leafiled was the house for Arrows and Super Aguri as well.
Another explorer (Kris Miller-KK Explores) accessed the facility back in September 2019 and uploaded the below:
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