Formula One News — March 2002

Motor Racing and the cinema have not always been easy bedfellows as Formula 1 found when it tried to do a deal a few years ago with Sylvester Stallone.

The recent crime wave in Brazil, about which we reported some months ago, has woken up even the most blinkered of Formula 1 individuals and the teams have been warned to be careful to avoid robberies and kidnappings.

Lotus Engineering will take part in the soapbox derby at the Goodwood Festival of Speed this summer with the aim of producing a 50kg device which will be capable of running at 55mph down the famous Goodhill hill.

The BBC's Tim Sebastian is famous for his direct and often abrasive interviewing techniques and his Hard Talk program has become very popular around the world as a result of the BBC World satellite channel.

Paying too much for sports rights has claimed another victim. British pay-TV ITV Digital went into administration on Wednesday after failing to make payments to the English Football League.

The game of negotiations surrounding the Kirch company continues with no-one outside the meetings really knowing what is going on and the media being used to exert pressure on the players.

It has been a rough winter for the International Formula 3000 series but in Brazil this weekend there will be 20 cars for the opening round of the 12-race series (all of which will take place as supporting events for the F1 Grands Prix).

Renault Sport's Ben Agathangelou, moved sideways by the recent appointment of John Iley as the team's new head of aerodynamics, has left the Enstone team and will start work on May 1 as the new head of aerodynamics at Jaguar Racing.

The most interesting question in recent days in racing circles is whether the Motor Sport Association in Britain will support an application to the FIA International Court of Appeal on behalf of Charles Nickerson's supposed F1 team (known as either Phoenix or DART GP).

The return of the car in which Ayrton Senna was killed at Imola, eight years ago, marks the end of the sorry tale of the legal action that followed the death of the great Brazilian driver.

There are a million and one different awards handed out each year to successful Grand Prix drivers but few of them have the same emotional value as the annual "Lorenzo Bandini Award".

The signs are that today will see a decision, one way or the other, on the future of the German media company Kirch, which controls the commercial rights to Formula 1 racing.

The latest twist in the convoluted tale of Kirch is that the troubled F1 commercial rights holder could be about to give up Kirch Media to Rupert Murdoch, Silvio Berlusconi and the investment bank Lehman Brothers.

Eddie Irvine was awarded damages of around $3000 this week resulting from his High Court victory over the Talksport radio station which had used his image to promote its programs - without his permission.

Young drivers may get excited about driving a Formula 1 car but two days going up and down the runways at the Elvington aerodrome in Yorkshire might have become a little bit dull for Japan's Ryo Fukuda, one of the test drivers of British American Racing.

Leading figures from different sports are to gather in London at the end of April to consider how sport is going to cope with the changing financial situation and technology.

A couple of weeks ago Eddie Irvine won a law suit in Britain over the illegal use of his image to promote the sales of a project he was not officially endorsing.

The Honda Formula 1 engineers, acutely aware that expectations are high, are racing to catch up in the battle for more horsepower.

The rumors that Peugeot may be looking at returning to F1 in 2004 with its own team have created a number of different theories about the route the team would be likely to take.

Ferrari knows that it needs its new F2002 and so one of the cars will be flown to Brazil for the Grand Prix next weekend.

The German government is not likely to help the Kirch empire if it does run into terminal trouble in the next few weeks.

Vodafone has jumped into Formula 1 sponsorship with much enthusiasm in recent months and has just concluded a deal to sponsor the Italian Grand Prix.

Ferrari has decided to use a combination of F2001 and F2002 chassis in Brazil next weekend, after testing both extensively over the past week in Barcelona.

Ferrari's impressive financial results for 2001 show record-breaking sales, an 18.5% leap in turnover and profits of $60m, up 35.9% over last year.

Poaching of key technical staff has been a major problem for all the major Formula 1 teams in recent years and there seems to be little they can do to stop this happening as rich middle-ranking teams seem to be willing to outspend the majors to get the right staff.