Formula One News — April 1999

AS the automotive industry consolidates frantically, there are rumors of a link being planned between Fiat - the parent company of Ferrari - and Mitsubishi Motors in Japan.

THE recent testing in Barcelona has highlighted a series of problems with Supertec V10 engines. Ralf Schumacher suffered one failure in his Williams, Giancarlo Fisichella lost an engine in his Benetton and both British American Racing drivers also had to put up with blow-ups.

ARROWS boss Prince Malik ado Ibrahim - who is now officially the commercial director as well - last week announced a small sponsorship deal with Virgin Records.

LUCA BADOER crashed heavily last week at Ferrari's Fiorano test track in Italy, while testing his Minardi-Ford M01. The Italian driver - who knows the circuit well because of his testing duties with Ferrari - had completed 49 laps of the circuit when his fly-by-wire throttle system appears to have malfunctioned, sending the car off the road at high speed. It crashed heavily into the barriers and Badoer suffered a fractured right hand.

WHEN the Formula 1 teams returned to Europe after the Australian Grand Prix they did enough miles of testing between them to have driven a car from Europe back to Melbourne! When they packed up to go to Brazil the 11 F1 teams had covered a grand total of 14,400 miles of testing in the last three weeks. And that does not include the aerodynamic mapping work up and down runways which several teams have also completed.