If you do a Google search for "Delta Prefco" you will not find it mentioned in any newspaper articles and it is only mentioned on one website article. It is the following article from 2008 in which Pitpass' business editor Chris Sylt revealed that the GP3 series would be launched.

Even this article only made a cursory reference to Delta Prefco. There is a very simple reason why there are so few mentions of it on the internet. It is the most important company in F1 and outside of the sport's corridors of power, only a handful of business analysts knew anything about the company. Until now.

As an indication of how well hidden the company is, one F1 sports journalist recently had a stab at creating a diagram of F1's corporate structure and Delta Prefco was one of the companies completely omitted, whilst another, which closed last year , was included.

The recent theories about News Corp bidding for F1 encouraged Sylt to dust off his files on Delta Prefco and there is good reason for doing so. It is sometimes said by conspiracy theorists that F1 could be sold and the new owners may find out that in fact they own or control nothing because they have bought the wrong company or perhaps they have to pay more to get control.

True, they are just old wives tales but no doubt they were fuelled by the events of 1998 when several teams were promised shares in Formula One Holdings (FOH) if it floated or was sold. FOH owned Formula One Administration, which directly held F1's commercial rights so it seemed a safe bet. From 1999 to 2006 an estimated $2.5bn was raised by selling stakes in F1 yet the company being sold was not FOH but instead its parent SLEC. As a result, the teams legitimately didn't get a penny. They took legal action about it but in the end were forced to sue their lawyers over the drafting of the contract.

Further fuel for the conspiracy theorists came in 2002 when three banks, BayernLB, Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan, took over 75% of F1's parent company but found that they did not have control of the businesses which run the sport. They were forced to take over the 75% following the bankruptcy of German media company Kirch which bought the stake with a loan given to it by the banks. Kirch paid $619m for 50% of F1 but it only got this price on condition that it took up an option to get a further 25% for $987.5m. This payment is what pushed it towards bankruptcy.

There is no suggestion that any of these scenarios would be repeated if F1 were to be sold now but nevertheless, there is no question that it is always absolutely crucial to buy the right company or, in the current situation, the right companies.