The team was initially created as a vehicle to enable Christian Horner to race in F3000 in 1997. According to Horner he set the team up with borrowed money, including a loan from his father, and persuaded P1 Motorsport founder Roly Vincini (who Horner had driven for in his first season of F3) to take on the role of his race engineer. He bought a second-hand trailer for the team from Helmut Marko, who as head of the Red Bull Junior Team was one of Horner's main rivals as a manager in F3000, and who he later worked closely with at Red Bull. He stayed in F3000 for 1998 and was joined at Arden by Kurt Mollekens, who showed good pace and led the championship at one stage. In the winter of 1998 family friend David Richards had been approached by Russian oil company Lukoil to enable them to enter motorsports sponsorship. As entries to F3000 were restricted, Richards agreed a deal with Horner that Prodrive would take a 50% stake in Arden, in return for Horner becoming team manager. As a result, the team signed Viktor Maslov as a driver under the Lukoil deal from 1999. The team started off poorly, and didn't have the pace to qualify for many races.