Formula One News — May 1997

MICHELIN has a habit of not announcing its major moves in motor sport until the last possible minute and there is a growing body of opinion in F1 that the French tire company is preparing to enter Grand Prix racing in 1998.

AS Bernie Ecclestone ties up the final details for the sale of shares in his company Formula 1 Holdings Ltd., there were suggestions in Barcelona that there could be revolutionary changes ahead for the organization of Grand Prix racing - including what could lead to a replacement of the Concorde Agreement with a longer-term tripartite contract between F1 Holdings Ltd., the FIA and the F1 teams.

RUMORS in Barcelona suggested that Fondmetal boss Gabriele Rumi is in the process of acquiring Flavio Briatore's shareholding in the company which owns 70% of the shares in the Minardi F1 team.

SAUBER has dumped Italian Nicola Larini in favor of Gianni Morbidelli.

THERE have been suggestions in recent weeks that the relationship between Alain Prost and Mugen Honda has been going through a rocky patch in recent weeks.

JACKIE STEWART has managed to convince the management of the Ford Motor Company that it must concentrate its efforts in Formula 1 on designing and building a competitive V10 engine for his team and not split its energy by providing customer V10 engines next year.

IF Mugen confirms that it is intending to supply Eddie Jordan with its V10 engines in the future, Tom Walkinshaw's plans to create a front running F1 operation will receive a major setback.

HIROTOSHI HONDA, the boss of Mugen Honda, is to decide shortly which team he intends to supply with his F1 engines in 1998.

THE Portuguese Grand Prix looks likely to be off the F1 calendar this year because there is too much to be done for the venue to be finished in time for an FIA inspection on August 31.

EARLY last week Britain's new Health Secretary Frank Dobson confirmed that the Labor government in Britain is preparing a law to ban sports sponsorships by cigarette manufacturers.

LOLA CARS, one of Britain's best-known racing car manufacturers, has gone into financial administration as a result of the company's failure in F1 earlier this year.

THERE were three days of testing last week in Barcelona, where teams were preparing for the forthcoming Spanish Grand Prix and it was the two Williams-Renault drivers Jacques Villeneuve and Heinz-Harald Frentzen dominating proceedings as usual.

THE Portuguese Grand Prix has been canceled and the final race of the year, according to the FIA, will be a European Grand Prix at Jerez de la Frontera in southern Spain.

QUEEN ELIZABETH II's speech at the opening of the new British Parliament last week - effectively a statement of the new government's planned policies - included the intention to ban tobacco advertising in Great Britain.

FERRARI test driver Gianni Morbidelli was in action in Barcelona last week at the wheel of a Sauber Petronas and it is perhaps significant that while Johnny Herbert was given two days of testing, his regular team mate Nicola Larini was left without any testing.

JARNO TRULLI's day of running with Benetton last week in Barcelona was interesting in that the team's official reason for using the Minardi driver - filming - was clearly not the real reason for the test.

DAMON HILL's patience with the Arrows team must be wearing thin.

BMW Motorsport engineers began studying normally-aspirated F1 engines as long ago as 1986 but a year later - faced by intense competition in the automotive markets - the Munich company withdrew from F1.

ONE name which is being overlooked in relation to the future of Prost Grand Prix is that of French Formula 3000 driver Laurent Redon, who is tipped to be nominated as Prost's test driver for 1998.

THERE is much excitement in F1 circles at the moment over the likely destination of money from British American Tobacco.

HAVING been replaced as technical director of Arrows by John Barnard, Frank Dernie is now looking at his Formula 1 future.

MOST of the Formula 1 teams are reporting that they have received approaches in recent months from British financial institutions wanting to buy equity because Bernie Ecclestone's new financial deal for the Concorde Agreement signatories is so attractive that teams will be making big profits by the end of the current deal in 2001.

THE major gossip in the paddock at Monaco last weekend was which team is going to be using the Mugen Honda engines next season.

WILLIAMS is tipped to be negotiating to hire Argentine designer Enrique Scalabroni to head the team's yet-to-be-announced sportscar operation with BMW.

RUMORS in recent days linking Audi with Benetton suggest that the German manufacturer is looking very closely at buying into Grand Prix racing.