Nothing is impossible, but some things seem pretty unlikely, at least on the face of it. It is reported, clearly based on a leak, that a small British energy drink company called Rich Energy is in talks with Force India to buy the team from Vijay Mallya and his partners for a supposed $280 million.

It all sounds highly unlikely. But it all depends on a consortium which is said to be behind the bid, and where the money will be coming from. It may also be largely fictitious and designed to get someone else to pay a higher price for the team, because it doesn’t make a lot of sense to put these things into the public domain before a deal is done. However for a start-up drinks company with very little money showing in its published accounts, it is useful publicity.

According to the reports former soccer player Rob Lee is a shareholder. This is not reflected in Companies House records but does not need to be declared if one owns less than 25 percent of the shares. The person who controls the company is William Storey, a computer consultant who has dabbled in sports marketing with boxer Frank Buglioni.

Generally-speaking in successful F1 deals, the source of the money is relatively easy to trace and in cases where it is not easy to see where the finance is coming from, the deals don’t often come to fruition. If there is a wildly wealthy group behind the idea then all well and good, but none of Storey’s shareholdings suggest such an entity, at least not in the UK.

Force India is fairly precarious at the moment with Vijay Mallya still facing extradition to India and work going on all the time in India to deconstruct his empire to pay the money he owes. The next hearing is in mid-March. His partner Subrata Roy is having similar trouble in India with the authorities trying to recoup money he owes by selling parts of his Sahara empire.