of the team. He hoped to finalise some more sponsorship deals which would allow Forti to compete in the Hungarian GP. Shannon responded by claiming it still owned 51 per cent of the team, and that it intended to solve Forti's financial problems itself, in addition to replacing Guido Forti as Team Principal. He duly took the company to court over the matter, an arduous process in the Italian legal system. With the team in limbo whilst the ownership dispute was judged, Forti's situation was bleak. The team faced the prospect of further heavy FIA-imposed fines for missing races if the situation did not improve, or even exclusion from the championship for bringing the sport into disrepute, as had happened to the Andrea Moda team in . Forti withdrew his team from the sport; it did not make an appearance at the Hungarian GP, the Belgian GP, nor at any further point in the championship. Badoer and Montermini were left without drives, and the promising FG03 chassis would no longer race. By the time Shannon Racing won the court case in September, Forti had ceased to exist. Shannon Racing's teams in the lower motorsport categories also closed down. Coincidentally, Guido Forti had signed the 1997 Concorde Agreement shortly before his team's demise, which could have given his team a chance of surviving if it had made it into that year due to the extra television revenue that was duly granted to each of the teams under the terms of the agreement. Legacy Forti's withdrawal marked not only the end of its participation in Formula One, but also terminated a team which had enjoyed success in International Formula 3000 and other minor categories. It is generally agreed that Forti may have succeeded if it had its 1995 budget and the FG03 car at the same time, and that Diniz's departure meant that it stood little chance of survival, but the team has become another example of a small, backmarking team unable to finance its aspirations. One of the final "privateer" teams to enter the sport in an era of increasing influence and participation from the large car manufacturers, Forti is often cited along with Pacific and Simtek as prime examples of this tendency. It was also argued that the increasing amount of money involved in financing an F1 team which was forcing many of the smaller teams to withdraw in the