2012 IRDU Rejects Cup season

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The 2012 IRDU Rejects Cup season was planned to be the second year of the IRDU Rejects Cup, and first under a new name with new regulations and new car. The championship was set to begin at Watkins Glen and was due to finish at Sugo in Japan.

Changes

Car

F1RLFS car - the Scaven S11 - was supposed to be replaced in favor of 2006 Formula Nippon car, the Lola FN06. The same car would be later used by Rejects of LFS' sucessor, International Formula Reject Challenge.

Race schedule

The season would bring two more races, expanding the race calendar by two. All previous tracks would replaced with new ones, located in Europe, North America, Africa and Asia.

Race format

Previous race distance of 300 kilometers per race would be changed to a race time of 30 minutes. The season would introduce a rolling start to all eight races of the season.

Teams and drivers (before the cancellation)

All the teams took part in the testing before the evantual collapse of the series.

Team # Race Drivers
Flag of Japan svg.png Sunshine Infiniti 0 Flag of Japan svg.png Nobou Takahashi
2 Flag of France svg.png Didier Honore
Flag of the Isle of Man svg.png Foxdale Auto Racing Team 3 Flag of the Isle of Man svg.png Douglas Mann
4 Flag of the Isle of Man svg.png Pippa Mann
Pirate.pngStarforce Engineering 5 Flag of Japan svg.png Hagane Shizuka
6 Flag of the Netherlands.svg.png Marco Van-Danne
Flag of Australia svg.png Qantas Melrose Racing Team 7 Flag of Australia svg.png Daniel Melrose
8 Flag of Australia svg.png Mitchell Macklin
Flag of the United Kingdom svg.png Castrol Jones Racing 9 Flag of the United Kingdom svg.png Sammy Jones
10 Flag of the United States svg.png Dan Greenlaw
Flag of Australia svg.png Simpson Motorsports 12 Flag of Australia svg.png Michael Robertson
Flag of Australia svg.png Rosenforth Engineering 13 Flag of Australia svg.png Rhys Davies
14 Flag of Australia svg.png Frank Zimmer
Flag of the United Kingdom svg.png Parklife Motorsport 15 Flag of the United Kingdom svg.png Damon Cannon
16 Flag of the United Kingdom svg.png Richie White
Flag of Italy svg.png Trueba Racing Team 17 Flag of Italy svg.png Gianluca Roda
Flag of Spain svg.png Team Phoenix 19 Flag of Spain svg.png Phoenix McAllister
20 Flag of Serbia svg.png Niko Bellic
Flag of Belgium svg.png Team Lotus Bakeries 21 Flag of Belgium svg.png Ron Mignolet
Flag of Italy svg.png Scuderia de Cesaris 23 Flag of the Netherlands.svg.png Vincent de Nieuwe
24 Flag of Morocco.svg.png Ismail Sbai
Flag of Poland svg.png Formanek Racing Team 25 Flag of Slovakia svg.png Matej Uram
26 Flag of Kazakhstan svg.png Roman Kuryavskiy

†Due to a possible entry mishap, the nationality of Starforce Engineering was not listed on the entry list.

Collapse and aftermath

After the first test sessions, there nothing that could be heard from IRDU. The first sign of this series being in trouble became apparent when the organization have to cancel the first race, and, evantually, more have to be cancelled. It was widely said that commercial rightholder, IRDU Holdings have to be put into administration after they have unable to make repayments against a leasing company, which also fell into administration. The British Serious Fraud Office investigated the issue, revealing that the leasing company that provided loans for Scaven Solutions, who provided IRDU's money for organizing the series, have accepted bribes to finance more loans. By November of that year, founder Jean Dennis Alcatraz spoke out after a long time and announced that the season have been cancelled (having already de facto cancelled by June that year) and closure of the series, and later he announced the sale of the series asset. Officials from the leasing company and IRDU were arrested and imprisoned for corruption and bribery in January 2013.

Following the 'asset saga' (which involved the not-so-endless passing of IRDU's assets) in 2013, as well as talks and rumors of possible revival of the series, a Finnish group, NVRT Holdings, bought out all of the IRDU's asset in late winter that year and revived it as Rejects of LFS. Safety reasons (following the fatal accident of Nobushige Fukuda in 2015) led it to be a short-lived one, however, and it was superseded by International Formula Reject Challenge in 2016, featuring changes similar to IRDU Rejects Cup.

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2011 F1Rejects LFS Cup season 2012 IRDU Rejects Cup season 2014 Rejects of LFS season