Formula One News — July 1999

AUSTRALIAN GRAND PRIX chief Ron Walker was in London last week arguing that the Australian Grand Prix needs to be the first race of the 2000 season. The FIA announced recently that the Melbourne race would be held on March 5 - two weeks after the Malaysian GP. Walker's primary aim is to get the race moved to March 12, which is the traditional Labor Day holiday weekend in Australia and the Moomba Festival in Melbourne. This has proved to be a good weekend to attract crowds in previous years.

AS we suggested in January, Rothmans International - which was bought recently by British American Tobacco for $7.5bn - has announced that it is not going to continue its Winfield backing with the Williams team in the year 2000. BAT has, not surprisingly, decided to concentrate all its efforts in F1 on British American Racing which is running at the moment with backing from BAT brands 555 State Express and Lucky Strike.

DAMON HILL will race for the last time in Formula 1 at Silverstone this weekend. The 1996 World Champion spent the early part of last week negotiating his exit from the sport while his likely replacement Jos Verstappen was testing for Jordan Grand Prix at Silverstone.

THE outgoing European Competition Commissioner Karel Van Miert has finally issued his long-awaited statement of objections detailing what he believes to be abuses of European Union law by the FIA and Bernie Ecclestone's companies Formula One Administration Ltd., and International Sportsworld Communicators (ISC). These firms market - or used to market - the television rights to international motor racing events.Typically, Van Miert chose to leak the documents to the press before they had been received by intended recipients and this led to much speculation about the security of Bernie Ecclestone's recently-announced $1.4bn Eurobond issue.

SAUBER has agreed an extension to its current engine supply deal with Ferrari with the Italians expected to supply the Swiss team with Sauber Petronas-badged V10 engines for a fourth season.

GENERAL MOTORS says that it has no plans to enter Formula 1 in the foreseeable future but the company's executive director of motorsports Herb Fischel admits that the company aspires to Grand Prix racing. "We would need to see a five to 10 year guarantee of stability in the regulations before we would think of committing to such a big program," Fischel said.