Formula One News — January 2000

AS we exclusively predicted on January 1, BMW Williams F1 has signed up 20-year-old British racer Jenson Button to be Ralf Schumacher's partner this season.

PROST GRAND PRIX launches its 2000 challenger on Tuesday this week in Barcelona - although the new Prost-Peugeot AP03 actually ran for the first time in a private test last Thursday at Magny-Cours - and we hear that the team has signed a major multi-year sponsorship deal with the Internet Search Engine company Yahoo Inc.

THE Formula 1 teams continued their work last week with tests at Barcelona, Silverstone, Fiorano, Magny-Cours and Lurcy-Levis.

TOM WALKINSHAW's newly-named Arrows F1 Team has announced that it has signed Jos Verstappen to be Pedro de la Rosa's partner in 2000.

BRITISH AMERICAN RACING's launch in London last week was largely overshadowed by the announcement in Spain that Jenson Button had been signed by Williams, but the Brackley team hopes that in the course of the season it will get the better of Williams with its new Honda V10 engines.

AS we suggested as long ago as September the German beer company Brauerie Beck & Co. is entering Formula 1 this year with Jaguar Racing.

THE new owners of Brands Hatch are beginning to understand the problems facing the Kentish racing circuit if it wishes to host the British Grand Prix in 2002 and this has led to suggestions in recent days that Interpublic may try to hire the Silverstone circuit from the British Racing Drivers' Club.

JACKIE STEWART confused the assembled Formula 1 media last week in London by announcing that he was standing down as chairman and chief executive of the new Jaguar Racing team but then said that he will not be going away.

THE departure of Andy Cowell from BMW Motorsport in Munich may not seem like big news but it is likely to have a dramatic effect on the German company's ability to produce a competitive Formula 1 engine in 2001.

TOYOTA MOTORSPORT last week laid the foundation stones for its new Formula 1 facilities in Cologne.

AS we were closing for press, the BMW Williams F1 team was making a final decision as to who will be its second driver in 2000.

WILLIAMS and Alessandro Zanardi have finally confirmed that their relationship has come to an end.

WITH the new generation of Formula 1 cars now beginning to appear, there has been an increase in testing with a major session last week at the Circuit de Catalunya, in Barcelona.

REPORTS in Holland suggest that Jos Verstappen has now signed for Arrows - as we have been predicting for some weeks.

AS Grand Prix racing faces up to a future without tobacco advertising, the sport seems to have found a new source of income in the high technology worlds of telecommunications, information technology and computers.

BENETTON launched its new Benetton-Playlife B200 car last week in Barcelona and says that it is looking ahead to a revival after a string of seasons which have produced poor results.

THE new Jordan Mugen-Honda EJ10 ran for the first time last week on the Club Straight at Silverstone circuit, Heinz-Harald Frentzen giving the new machine its first shakedown tests.

BRITISH AMERICAN RACING has confirmed that it has had yet another management reshuffle with Don Brown - the chief executive of Imperial Tobacco in Canada - becoming chairman of the board of BAR's holding company.

THE FIA World Motorsport Council has decided to ban all Formula 1 testing between the end of the season and December 31, 2000 - thus extending the current ban to two months.

MICHELIN is looking at running a testing team this year.

THERE are to be a series of important technical meetings in the next few days as the Formula 1 teams try to agree on a new set of technical rules for the 2001 season.

WILLIAMS and BMW showed off their new colors last week in Munich but failed to name the team's big new sponsor.

BERNIE ECCLESTONE's sale of 50% of SLEC Holding - the parent company of Formula One Holdings - to the venture capital company Morgan Grenfell Private Equity Ltd. has run into unexpected problems.

WHILE British American Racing goes through another reshuffle, we hear that David Richards of Prodrive is positioning himself for a bid for a shareholding in BAR if things do not go according to plan this year.

THE Minardi team has finally given some details about its plan for the 2000 season with the announcement that the team has been renamed Telefonica Minardi Fondmetal.