Formula One News — February 2002

Like many of the Formula 1 teams Ferrari has worked hard on its front-end aerodynamics with the lower suspension mounting points being located beneath the chassis itself attached to a longitudinal underbody "fin".

Two considerable accidents marked testing in Valencia Thursday.

Kirch's managing-director Dieter Hahn had resigned from the board of British Sky Broadcasting.

Cesare Fiorio has done a lot of jobs in motor racing but his latest is to promote Spain's Formula Super Nissan series.

The Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper is reporting that the Kirch media group is under pressure from the German government to sell off its non-core assets to avoid being swallowed up by a foreign media business.

A number of Formula 1 teams seem to have found themselves in difficulties because they decided not to copy the Sauber aerodynamic principles which were introduced in 2001.

Ferrari technical director Ross Brawn says that the Italian team delayed the launch of the F2002 because the development programs had not produced the results which the team had been hoping for.

The rumors have been circulating for weeks but the new Ferrari F2002 does not look very different from its predecessor.

Ferrari has signed a new sponsorship agreement with the semiconductor manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

It has yet to be officially confirmed by the Orange Arrows team but it now seems certain that Jos Verstappen is to be booted out of the team and replaced by Heinz-Harald Frentzen.

Ferrari has launched its 2002 challenger at Maranello and the team has decided to take a risk in an effort to find more performance after winning three consecutive Constructors' titles.

The Bayerische Landesbank has said that it will not be lending the Kirch Group any more money and that opens the way for Kirch to be taken over by a bigger rival media company.

There have been rumblings from Spain that the new Williams FW24 chassis is not as competitive as the team had been hoping it might be - despite the fact that the car is setting good testing times.

The testing in Valencia got a little more crowded on Wednesday when BAR, Jaguar and Arrows joined the fray.

A week ago Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello both had sizeable accidents during testing in Barcelona.

The Court of Appeal in London has rejected the appeal by the Arrows Formula 1 team against a ruling in February last year that the team should pay Pedro Diniz $700,000 in compensation after it failed to convince a court that Diniz broke his contract with Arrows at the end of 1998.

Honda may be struggling to be competitive in Formula 1 at the moment but the company is making a lo of money, recording a profit of over $1.1bn in the last three months of 2001.

As we exclusively predicted two weeks ago rising Australian star Ryan Briscoe, the Toyota F1 test driver, will drive for the Nordic Racing team in Formula 3000 this season.

Our spies at Leafield are revealing more details of the purposeful-looking Arrows A23, which does as we speculated feature a Sauber-like front suspension.

Prost Grand Prix technical director Henri Durand is a man in demand at the moment following the closure of the French team.

Sauber, Jordan and Minardi joined testing in Valencia on Tuesday, and Nick Heidfeld posted the fastest lap of the day in the new Sauber-Petronas C21.

The Laguna Seca racing circuit has started work on $15m upgrading program which will result in the circuit finally getting permanent garages with VIP hospitality suites above them and a brand new media center and race control building.

Eddie Jordan has flown off to Tokyo today for what are believed to be talks with the management of Honda.

BAR boss David Richards has recently had an hour-long cup of coffee with none other than Eddie Irvine, lead driver of Jaguar Racing.

Yesterday we hinted that there was about to be a reshuffle amongst some of the top engineers in F1 and rumors have already begun that Egbahl Hamidy is about to depart Jordan Grand Prix and may be replaced by Renault F1's Pat Symonds.