Formula 1: Guess who's back at Rich Energy?

Not even a month and a half after selling his majority stake in Haas Formula 1 sponsor Rich Energy, William Storey has returned as majority shareholder.

The Rich Energy-Haas Formula 1 sponsorship debacle that took over Formula 1 headlines in mid-July seemingly came to an end after CEO William Storey sold his majority stake in the company.

But not even a month and a half after doing so, Storey has returned.

Yep. He’s back.

After Storey “sold” his majority stake in the company, there was speculation that perhaps this was just another fake report, just like many of his previous tweets about his company’s title sponsorship deal with Haas “ending”.

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However, it was confirmed that he had indeed sold his majority stake in the company to the BDG Group, specifically director Matthew Bruce Kell, in London, England, and that the company was renamed Lightning Volt.

Now, however, Storey has taken control of 6,400 of the company’s 10,000 shares, making him the majority shareholder of the company.

Why is this significant, especially now?

Haas have revealed that Rich Energy will decide on the future, or lack thereof, of their title sponsorship agreement with the team within the next few weeks.

Even in the midst of the Rich Energy-Haas debacle, which involved Storey taking jab after jab at the team and insisting that his company had “sacked” the team for “poor performance”, Haas have continued to run Rich Energy branding, as the contract never actually ended, which Storey accidentally confirmed at one point in his attempt to convince people otherwise.

Here is what team principal Guenther Steiner had to say about the prospects of this decision, according to Motorsport.

"“It [the situation] has calmed down and now we see where we go from here. First we need to be calm and make a rational decision, and then it will be decided. At the moment they [the logos] are on here, as you can see, so they need to decide where they want to go not us. It is their decision, and then our one will follow. That should happen in the next week or so, and this time it will happen properly.”"

Haas previously revealed that they would not be willing to work with Storey after he went “rogue”, and now he is back in the picture.

Yet many of his crazy tweets have been deleted from the Rich Energy twitter account, which many fans actually started to believe was only a parody account, and as Steiner stated, it is the company’s decision. If Rich Energy do opt to end their title sponsorship agreement with Haas, they would owe the team £35 million.

I will save you the trouble of going through every little detail of what happened prior to Storey’s departure, but if you’re interested in reading up on this extraordinarily comical scandal, I encourage you to click here.

It’s a must-read for comedy purposes alone, even though many of the tweets have, in fact, been deleted.

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We will just have to wait and see how William Storey’s return to Rich Energy turns out, especially as it pertains to the company’s relationship with Haas and their future (or lack thereof) as a title sponsor in Formula 1.

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Formula 1: Guess who’s back at Rich Energy?

By Asher Fair | Aug 30, 2019

Not even a month and a half after selling his majority stake in Haas Formula 1 sponsor Rich Energy, William Storey has returned as majority shareholder.