Formula One News — November 1998

GIANCARLO MINARDI says that his F1 team will probably stick with the same drivers next year and has confirmed that even if there is not a Grand Prix in Argentina Esteban Tuero will remain with the team.

IF losing the World Championship was not bad enough, Michael Schumacher has come under attack in recent days from other directions with the most bizarre story coming from the Algerian government's daily newspaper El-Moudjahid.

AS we suggested in July there are plans for an Indian Grand Prix to be held near Calcutta with a 500-acre site at Bantola having been chosen by the West Bengal state government which has established a 22-member steering committee,

TEN of the 11 Formula 1 teams stayed on at Suzuka last week to take part in the first test of Bridgestone's 1999 tires which feature four grooves in the front tires rather than three as is the case this year.

VOLKSWAGEN boss Ferdinand Piech has denied speculation that Europe's biggest carmaker is planning to enter Grand Prix racing with its Audi brand.

BERNIE ECCLESTONE says that he is looking at investing in both tennis and soccer with the money he hopes to raise from his planned Formula 1 bond issue.

AS we predicted recently Reynard Motorsport is to float on the New York Stock Exchange.

AFTER his meeting with President Menem, Bernie Ecclestone flew to the United States for a short holiday with his wife and children in New York. We believe that Bernie will also have talks with Indianapolis Motor Speedway boss Tony George to finalize the deal for Grand Prix racing to go to Indy in the summer of 2000.

BERNIE ECCLESTONE met Argentine President Carlos Menem when he visited London last week.

WHILE many teams are undergoing big changes at the moment McLaren is currently fairly stable although there is likely to be some restructuring in its race engineering team next year as it will once again include former Williams engineer David Brown.

AUSTRALIAN airline owner Paul Stoddart says he wants to run his own Formula 1 team and last week took a big step towards that when he bought all the movable assets of the Tyrrell F1 team from British American Racing.

THE Williams team recently delivered two FW20 chassis to Munich to be used by BMW for engine testing next season. The BMW engines are somewhat delayed but the latest version of the V10 is producing promising horsepower figures on the dynos. The first of these engines will be ready to run in the car in February when we expect that Jos Verstappen will be named the team's test driver, having had experience with both Renault and Ford F1 engines in recent years.

BRITISH AMERICAN RACING has finally confirmed that Ricardo Zonta is to be Jacques Villeneuve's partner next season and the announcement - which had been delayed because of the branding problems encountered by the team in recent weeks - suggests that a solution has been found between the various BAT companies involved in BAR.

THERE have been some fairly major changes at Sauber in recent weeks with the racing team being reorganized under the control of German Jost Capito, who was previously in charge in the organization of the Sauber Petronas Engineering road car engine project.

TOM WALKINSHAW's Arrows team was linked to a possible deal with Toyota during the Suzuka weekend but we do not think anything will come of it, despite the fact that Tom spent five hours meeting with Toyota bosses.

WE understand that having failed to convince teams to restrict testing Bernie Ecclestone has discovered that Bridgestone is keen to keep down the number of tires needed next year and would like to stop the level of testing which currently exists.

ALTHOUGH Honda has yet to officially confirm that it is entering Formula 1 in the year 2000 there is no doubt that a team is being put together and that it will begin running cars in both Japan and Europe within days of officially confirming its entry into F1.