Formula One News — January 1996

WORD on the street in Formula 1 sponsorship circles is that Jordan will reveal backing this week from Camel cigarettes.

BENETTON continues to add to its engineering staff at Enstone with the hiring in recent weeks of former Pacific Grand Prix technical director, Frank Coppuck.

TOM WALKINSHAW RACING - which runs the Ligier Formula 1 team - has hired Italian Daniele Audetto to help the operation improve its commercial structure.

BMW top management have still to make a final decision as to whether they intend to re-enter Formula 1 racing.

LUCA BADOER, Pedro Lamy, Giancarlo Fisichella, Tarso Marques and Ricardo Rosset are all trying to secure drives with Minardi for the coming season.

TWENTY-SEVEN year old Brazilian Ricardo Rosset has only recently made an impact on the international motor racing scene, although he has in fact been racing in Europe since 1992.

JAPANESE driver Hideki Noda is understood to be closed to concluding a deal with Forti to partner Andrea Montermini.

AMID a flurry of kilts and bagpipes at the North American International Motor Show in Detroit, the Ford Motor Company announced that it is to terminate its relationship with the Sauber F1 team at the end of the year and begin an exclusive five-year deal with Jackie Stewart, who is to establish a new F1 team - Stewart Grand Prix. This will grow out of the existing Paul Stewart Racing operation in Milton Keynes, England.

ALTHOUGH they have been expected for some time, the cutbacks at Ligier announced last week left the motor racing community at Magny-Cours reeling as 28% of the work force was told that it was out of work.

PEUGEOT SPORT's Jean-Pierre Jabouille has been dropped after two years as head of the company's disappointing F1 program.

MOBIL, McLaren's fuel and oil supplier in F1, has just announced a major new partnership with Porsche, a strange alliance given Mobil's role as a "technology partner" with the Marlboro McLaren Mercedes team.

THE decision by Ford to join forces with Stewart Grand Prix in 1997 is a disappointment for Peter Sauber.

ARROWS Technical Director Alan Jenkins is understood to have re-signed and is expected to take up the role of technical director and chief designer for the new Stewart Grand Prix operation.

CURIOUS goings-on are not unusual at Ligier these days, although rumors in France this week have confounded everyone because it seems that the team is to have backing from not one but two competing oil companies in 1996: longtime Ligier sponsor Elf and Castrol.

BENETTON'S desire to become an Italian team may have implications which the team had not previously considered. According to Article 93 of the FIA Formula 1 Sporting Regulations, the team is not allowed to test at a circuit where a Grand Prix is to be held - except in the country where the team holds its license.

AS we predicted in October, the Honda Motor Company is considering a return to Grand Prix racing.

FORMULA 1 racing is a world in which it is big news if there is no news.