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David RichardsDavid Richards CBE (born 3 June 1952) is the chairman of Prodrive and the former Team Principal of the BAR Formula One auto racing team. After training as an accountant, Richards began his auto racing career as a rally co-driver. He partnered with Ari Vatanen at Ford from 1979, and they won the 1981 World Rally Championship together, shortly after which Richards retired from co-driving. In 1984 Richards co-founded Prodrive, an auto racing and automotive engineering group. In 1999 he sold 49% of Prodrive to APAX. He acquired the television and commercial rights to the World Rally Championship in 2000 when he bought International Sportworld Communicators from Bernie Ecclestone. In 1997, when Flavio Briatore was fired as Director of the Benetton team, Richards replaced him. In 2000 Richards was put in charge of the new Jaguar Formula One team with the promise that the team would be challenging for the Driver and Constructor titles in the first two years of competition. However, the team was grossly underfunded by Formula One standards and after two years of indifferent results with an unreliable car Richards was edged out by the Ford management. When the BAR team was restructuring after the departure of Craig Pollock in 2001, they brought in Prodrive to run the team with Richards as their Team Principal. Under his direction there has been a huge improvement in BAR with the team taking second place in the 2004 Constructors Championship. Richards also brought Jenson Button to the team and made him lead driver providing the majority of their championship points in 2004. However, when Honda increased its share of BAR in late 2004, Richards was replaced as Team Principal by Prodrive's Managing Director Nick Fry. In the 2005 New Year Honours List Richards was awarded a CBE for his services to motorsport. David Richards is also a major figure in the complex politics of Formula One Management and is an advocate for measures to reduce the costs of car development as well as increasing safety. References
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