Formula One News — January 2001

MICHAEL SCHUMACHER admitted he was "happy" after he made his first testing appearance for Ferrari since completing last year's World Championship winning season in Malaysia in October.

THE deal between Leo Kirch and EM.TV which was designed to rescue Thomas Haffa's ailing media company looks to have come unstuck and now various groups are circling the stricken company - which owns 50% of the Formula One group of companies - trying to decide what to do next.

AN announcement is expected within days that Australian Paul Stoddart has bought the Minardi team and Australia will have a Formula 1 team to support for the first time in nearly 20 years.

IT is ironic that at a time when grand prix racing has become one of the great international televised sporting spectaculars, the outcome of the 2001 world championship could be decided simply by what tires the winning car is contracted to race on.

JAGUAR RACING said on Tuesday that rumors claiming former world champion Niki Lauda is to join the team are "pure speculation".

FERRARI test driver Luca Badoer will undergo further tests in Italy this afternoon (Monday) after being released from the hospital following a horrific crash at the Circuit de Catalunya on Sunday.

BRITON David Coulthard topped the times on the second day of testing at the Circuit de Catalunya on Monday as he stepped up his preparations for the 2001 season.

INSIDEF1.COM has announced that 19 year-old Californian Patrick Long is the man most likely to take the United States of America back to the top of the Grand Prix racing world by electing him its 2001 Young Driver Award recipient.

FERRARI confirmed on Monday night that test driver Luca Badoer will be forced out of action for two weeks following his horror crash in testing at the Circuit de Catalunya on Sunday.

THOMAS HAFFA's EM.TV organization was the center of a potential major legal confrontation yesterday after Morgan Grenfell Private Equity, the London-based equity house, threatened possible action after the deal involving shares in Bernie Ecclestone's F1 holding company "went badly wrong."

THE West McLaren-Mercedes team announced on Monday that the wraps will be pulled off their new MP4/16 car at the Valencia circuit, Spain on Wednesday, February 7.

BERNIE ECCLESTONE and his wife Slavica take sixth place in a survey of Britain's top 300 millionaires published in the Mail on Sunday newspaper this week.

EUROPEAN AVIATION chairman Paul Stoddart has confirmed that he is set to secure the future of ailing Minardi by buying into the team.

FERRARI test-driver Luca Badoer escaped serious injuries after being rushed to hospital following a freak accident during a testing session at the Circuit de Catalunya circuit in Spain.

ITALIAN Jarno Trulli has backed Kimi Raikkonen to match Jenson Button's debut season and become an instant success in Formula One.

BRITISH AMERICAN RACING will not launch their 2001 challenger on Friday as planned -- because Jacques Villeneuve pranged the only new car the team have.

MCLAREN team-boss Ron Dennis has spoken for the first time of his plans for a new £400 million factory, which he confidently predicts "will be an industrial utopia for my workers".

JUAN PABLO MONTOYA admits he would race in Formula One for half the money than what he was earning in America.

JORDAN have confirmed that were forced to abandon testing at Silverstone after the snow forecasted for the weekend began to fall early on Friday morning.

BRITISH AMERICAN RACING confirmed on Friday that they will still test in Barcelona next week, despite Jacques Villeneuve's crash at Jerez this week.

THIS weekend Bernie Ecclestone and Thomas Haffa, his partner in the Formula One group of companies, are due to meet in Austria, probably during the annual Hannenkamm ski racing festival at Kitzbuhel.

FORMULA ONE analyst Tony Jardine has been confirmed as the host of The Grand Prix party next month, and will be joined by British television presenter Carol Vorderman.

EDDIE JORDAN realized that things had gone awry immediately after the roguish, playful New Year greetings in the little media soiree.

THERE has been a major reshuffle of the staff of Ferrari with Britain's Nigel Stepney moving into a new role as racing manager.

FERRARI driver Michael Schumacher believes Sauber's new recruit Kimi Raikkonen has the pedigree to become a future world champion in Formula One.