It's funny how the worm turns. In the middle of last year Glenn Seton was keen to remain a V8 Supercar team owner, but somehow in mid-December that desire had fully dissipated. Instead of digging his way into the soil, Seton was coming up for air in the biggest shock of the off-season.

Reality was telling Seton that driving, owning and running a team was just too much, no matter how much raw talent he possessed behind the wheel. He also knew that he needed a second car and more than $5m to get back to the front of the field - none of which was coming.

The dawning of his new life came at just the right time. Ford Performance Vehicles chief David Flint was running into a brick wall in his negotiations to buy Bob Forbes' 00 Motorsport, so a phone call from Seton was very welcome even if we may never really know why the 00 deal fell over. It took a little bit of thought and some planning around the issues of taking a single car team and turning it into a three car team in a handful of weeks, but on paper it looked possible, ideal even - albeit a little late to get ready for 2003.

Despite a rough couple of seasons, Seton is still one of the premier brands in the Ford Racing Australia armoury, so to blend him into an operation with Craig Lowndes and future star David Besnard was perfect. Especially if you believe the mid-season rumour of an HRT approach.

Ford was keen too, with Oz president Geoff Polites swinging his corporate weight and money behind the new venture with a five year deal that should help the new Ford Performance Racing tackle the HRT head-on.

The story on the formation of FPR comes in three acts. The first is the protracted and logical negotiations with Bob Forbes to buy 00 Motorsport lock, stock and barrel. The second takes in the Seton deal, and the third is building a race winning team. One and two are complete, act three will define its success - or otherwise.

Act 1

"We had been talking to Bob for 10 months," Flint said of the 'secret' negotiations the world knew about, "and weren't able to come to a mutually acceptable deal - we both tried fairly hard to make this work, but it was apparent we weren't going to get it to work in a way that would satisfy us both.

"We had contacted Glenn during the year to see if he was interested in selling his licences, and at that time he wasn't. He wanted to run for another year as a single car team. And so, we left it at that.

"In December when we weren't going forward with Bob, we asked if Glenn would consider selling, and we were astonished ... or not astonished, we were delighted when he said, 'Yeah, let's talk'. And we talked and we were able to come to an agreement pretty damn quick."

Act 2

The first part was long and bore no fruit, the second bit was lightning fast in comparison. Its full course was less than a month, and but for holidays over Christmas could have been a lot quicker.

Seton says it came from the final realisation that to get back to the top of the sport as a driver, he had to sell his business.

"At the end of the day I looked at where I was going," Seton explained, "and the past couple of years I've been disappointed with how competitive I've been. It's been pretty difficult to keep the motivation going as a driver like that.

"I look towards how many years I believe I've got in the sport, and I reckon I've got at least seven or eight years as a driver. I want to get back to being one of the top drivers and run at the front of the field as much as I can. The best way to do that is for me to be a full-time driver, just driving for someone.

"Looking back on it now, it's been 14 years I've had my own race team - since 1989. It's probably mixed emotions to walk away from, but I'm very happy and proud of what I've achieved, except for the past couple of years. The results haven't been there lately, but there ain't too many out there who have owned their own race teams and driven and also won championships.

"It really was only last year when I started to think about it, some other opportunities throughout the past year were put to me to become a driver (I won't say who they were or where they came from), which probably opened the doors to a situation of thinking about doing something different, as in becoming just a driver."

Seto was probably astounded when he rang Flint in the week before Christmas to find he was pretty keen to cut a deal. It meant FPR buying Seton's operation, including his two-car franchise, and striking a deal to lease Rod Nash's single car franchise that had previously been used to run Team Brock.

Flint knew he would need to field three cars to accommodate Seton, Craig Lowndes and David Besnard - provided the latter two were happy to move with the Ford money. They were. Eventually TEGA gave the deal the stamp of approval around Australia Day, money changed hands, Seton became very wealthy and a five year plan was kicked into gear with an accelerated opening.

The first sods of dirt have been turned on the site for a new purpose-built workshop in Campbellfield (Vic) next to FPV and Ford itself. In terms of sponsors, Ford is obviously the most important and has said it will back the team for five years and Flint, like John Crennan at HRT, says this long term support is critical to success. CAT is also involved, backing the Craig Lowndes car.

"I don't want the hassle of wondering where the dollars are coming from and getting them to renegotiate sponsorship contracts every year. I don't think it's any good for me and it's no good for the sponsor. It doesn't help build a brand for the sponsors, does it?

"You can't plan a business on a 12 month cycle, you just can't do that, it's wrong. For one thing it's nerve wracking. And you need to be sure that you've got a vision."

For Flint the race team gives him a complete set of resources to take on his rivals from Fishermen's Bend and Clayton. The motor racing team is about winning races, shaking champagne and selling road cars and merchandise.

He hasn't even factored into the equation that the BA Falcon may not cut it as a race car. In a parity sport, we know having a Wheels Car of the Year award counts for diddly squat.

"Life's a gamble," Flint philosophises. "I don't expect the BA will be anything like the AU in any sense. It's already showing that it's a more marketable product - we know that it's a step forward. We've just spent a few years and the best part of half a billion dollars making it a better vehicle than the AU, so it's a good place to start.

"Fundamentally the BA is much stiffer than AU, and by a lot. We know that the drive train is good and that has not changed. We know that there's been a lot of work done between seasons to better reflect the position that the series demands. I'm enthusiastically looking forward to 2003."

In the short-term there will be a lot of liaison with Prodrive in the UK, much the same way the HRT probably leaned on TWR in the early days. He doesn't expect this is a long-term approach, but it will help the new team get a leg-up.

The comparisons between HRT and FPR are fairly obvious. Both have a parent company in the UK that has a long and successful history in motorsport. That parent company, in each case, builds the high performance road product for the marque for which it races.

Act 3

Fans of the Blue Oval are over the moon - this is the answer, they believe, to years of suffering at the hands of HRT fans. They are running up and down main streets all over Australia singing hallelujah and praising the new messiah, but Flint is standing there with a very large water hose. With only one BA on stream at the start of the season and having tripled its staff in just four weeks - FPR has taken on a big task.

"It would have been much better to have started 12 months earlier. It would have been better to try and run a three-car team with services that were big enough. And it would have been better to start with more than nine people, which is what we had when we purchased Seton's operation. But unfortunately, we're not able to.

"So we know we're on the back foot.

"The Ford fans have the right to expect that Team Ford will do something better this year than previous years. And they may be disappointed in the short term because they are so wound up and they really want it. But I don't think we have the ability to give them a consistent result for some time.

"Team Blue is going to work, I'm a competitive person and I expect my bit of Team Blue to be the winners' winner. When push comes to shove, Team Blue is going to win 50% of the races."

In the meantime he says the Ford fans will have to rely on the other star Ford teams - and hopefully a series of bittersweet victories for Flint. He wants to see Fords winning, and that will help him shift GTs, but he would now rather it was one of his three drivers doing the winning.

All three drivers say they are looking forward to working with the other two top flight drivers, and I'm not sure we've seen a line-up as strong as this - Craig Lowndes, Glenn Seton and David Besnard make a powerful combination. It is a bit more edgy than Larry's of last year, and certainly eclipses anything the HRT has offered up.

In Seton you have one of the elder statesmen of the sport, a champion in his mid-20s and with wins in everything except Bathurst. Lowndes was a champion in his early 20s, and he's got the lot: championships, Bathurst and the biggest personal following in the sport this side of Peter Brock.

Bezzy is the future, he's got it all in front of him. Two years into the sport he has a whole heap of wrecked cars behind him and a career that truly sparked into life earlier last year. He has a Queensland 500 to his name, and will no doubt sport a bloated trophy case by the time he shuts down his career.

Three strong drivers is just the start for Flint. He has been on a mad hunt for engineers and staff during January and February. With an almost all-new team, it is important they bond quickly with their drivers.

On the external cues, Lowndes will start the season with a BA - Seton insisted he get the new car - in CAT colours. The other two cars will be identical and not carry any extra sponsorship that affects the team's ability to swap drivers at Sandown and Bathurst where they will run three BA Falcons.

Ford Performance Racing is a bold venture, a change of direction for Ford itself and an external sign, again, that Ford is getting more aggressive in its push to unseat the Commodore in every way.

Flint has been with the performance division of Ford for quite some time now. He was a director of Tickford before selling to Prodrive two years ago. And that means he has felt the pain of the Ford fans since the arrival of the AU on the track. Now with three stars of the V8 Supercar car circus he is hoping one day to see all three of his drivers on the podium.

In the meantime he is waiting for that first champagne soaked podium for FPR. "Yeah that would be really, really good," Flint says looking out the window like it was a TV screen with his dream. "I'm looking forward to that day."

Craig Lowndes: Managing Change Craig Lowndes obviously is not afraid of change. That's not to say he seeks it out, but he certainly doesn't back away if he sees a need. Last Christmas he saw that need, new baby in his arms, plenty of lessons in his new found passion of horse whispering and a departure from 00 Motorsport. He did want to stay there, but when he was forced to make a choice he weighed it up and made a phone call to Bob Forbes to tell him the bad news. Ford Performance Racing was and is his future. "The perfect world for me would have been to stay where I was and work with people I'd worked with for the past two years. I was always keen to find out first where they (Prodrive) would go, what they would provide and in the long term whether it was going to be the best Ford team out there and the best team in the category. "And I think I'd have to say it will be. It is going to take time for us to get up and running, but it is going to be good. I guess Ford made a decision; Prodrive made a decision; and we had to make a decision too." FPR's premium brand, Lowndes, is paired with new sponsor CAT in the team's only BA Falcon. It is part of the transition which will be tough; one BA and two AUs is not really the perfect mix for the new team but it is all it can do. "It'll be interesting to see the comparison and I'm sure the first test will show what the difference is between the two cars. We know the AU has a deficiency in the aero package, and we all believe that the BA will be a marked improvement. "All the testing and aero testing that I've been privy to has shown that. "So I'm looking forward to it, but yeah, it's going to be a huge challenge and I'll be the Lone Ranger in a sole car."

Number 3 - Not Intimidated David Besnard is FPR's third driver, and in many ways he is the wild card of the bunch. It has become quite clear the boy with the Hollywood smile can drive a car, next to two of the sport's most established champions we'll get a pretty clear idea just how good he is. Bezzy left SBR last year on his way to 00 Motorsport, and took the same turn as Lowndes in late December as the FPR deal with Seton was falling into place. It wasn't what he planned, but it is a good result. "In one way it's better than I could've hoped for and in another way it's going to be tough while we are getting up and running," he said. "But you know I'm excited and looking forward to it and it's going to be great long term." Having just settled into his new home on the Gold Coast, he is ready to spend a lot of time on planes with new teammate Craig Lowndes. And with his competitive nature and abundance of confidence, maybe he'll start niggling at Lowndes on the plane. "I don't care who my teammate is, I just want equal equipment and to have a chance to show what I can do. I'm not intimidated by anyone. Having said that, it's a bonus that I've ended up with these two guys. "It's going to be a tough year, and we're saying to everyone not to expect too much yet. But that doesn't mean that we won't be trying our butts off and hopefully we'll still get some good results early on."

Glenn Seton: New Horizons When Glenn Seton's last chance for a ramp-up to two cars fell through just before Christmas, it was perhaps the straw that broke the camel's back. "It was part of it, but it wasn't all of it. The thing that actually made me make the decision, was that at the end of the day I wasn't enjoying what I was doing. It was hard work and the motivation was lacking. "When you come from winning races, and from winning championships and from running in the top 10 in the majority of the championships throughout the years you've been involved in V8 Supercars - you get to a point where some of the time you struggle and you need to make changes. "The biggest factor that made me make the decision was that I enjoyed doing being a race driver. There was way too much pressure on me as a driver and an owner with all the responsibilities. To be competitive in this game today, you've got to enjoy the driving, and that's what I want to do." The asking price to win is now more than $5m a year, and that is what is pushing the sport into a new stratosphere. Seton thinks you can win the odd race here and there on less, but to consistently battle the HRT you've got to get close to them on budget. Seton didn't have that money, so the decision in the end was quite easy once he came to grips with selling his life's work. Seton expects to fight his way back to the top of the sport as a driver, and enjoy his renaissance years as he heads towards 45 - at which age he says he'll need to sit down and re-assess. "I am one of the three drivers and I've got to do the best I can with what I'm supplied and I believe long term or in the future that will be very, very good equipment and the team will be quite a good team. At the end of the day I don't think I'll have any problems adapting to being just a driver." On his life as a team owner, he says he has few regrets. "Probably the only regrets stem from how competitive I was in the last two years. If I had decided to do this earlier, maybe the results would have been different. I'd say that I'm really happy with what I've done and what I've achieved. At the end of the day not many owner/ drivers have won championships and I've won a lot of races in V8 Supercars. "If I can get back to winning races I'll be really satisfied with what I've achieved. I've had the highs and I've had the lows and to be able to finish off on highs would be something I'd really look forward to." Maybe he can even win at Bathurst. "That is the one that has got away in the past and it's one I want to win for sure, yeah. But I think Bathurst is one event that any touring car driver would like to win, not just me."