Formula One News — April 2002

The first four Grands Prix of the year have added up to 247 laps of racing and thus far only two men have completed every lap.

The Kirch house of cards seems to be on the verge of final collapse with the latest word from Germany being that the German media group's holding company Taurus Holding GmbH is on the verge of filing for insolvency.

ITV Digital may not be saved but it is possible that a consortium led by the venture capital company Apax Partners and Stephen Grabiner, the man who founded ITV Digital in July 1999.

In Formula 1 it is easy for people to kick a team when it is down.

Jaguar Racing has strengthened its technical staff with the hiring of two aerodynamicists: one from McLaren and the other from Arrows.

The news wires have been buzzing in recent days about the possibility of Jenson Button moving to Ferrari.

seems that the lack of on-track interest in Imola has led to an early start for the 2003 "Silly Season" with a lot of rumors circulating about changes in the driver line-ups for next year.

Three of the banks that were owed billions of dollars by the Kirch media empire are thought to have made a bid for the group's 58% steak in SLEC, the company that owns the commercial rights to Formula One.

Eddie Jordan says that if he has to cut more jobs at his team, he will do so in order to make the team "tighter, more committed and harder.

The Orange Arrows team went testing last week at Silverstone for the first time since the season began six weeks ago in Australia.

Ferrari is dominating the world championship but has no intentions of letting up, as the team has been busy testing this week with three drivers on two different circuits.

Richard Parry-Jones, the Chief Technical Officer of the Ford Motor Company, has been given the responsibility of looking after the Premier Performance Division of the Premier Automotive Group, following the reshuffle in the wake of Wolfgang Reitzle's departure from PAG.

JP Morgan Chase, Lehman Brothers and the Bayerische Landesbank are reported to be close to a deal to take over the commercial rights to Formula 1 from Leo Kirch.

The FIA is restructuring quietly at the moment following the establishment of the new FIA Foundation.

Ferrari's Luca di Montezemolo recently offered Michael Schumacher the chance to work for Ferrari for life. Schumacher revealed the news in an interview with a Cologne newspaper which will be published tomorrow.

The departure of Dr. Wolfgang Reitzle as the head of Ford's Premier Automotive Group, which is expected to be announced later today, could be a hugely significant move for the Jaguar Racing Formula 1 program.

Wolfgang Reitzle's replacement as head of Ford's Premier Automotive Group is 41-year-old American Mark Fields, who has been working at Mazda in Japan since 1998 and became its president in December 1999 when Jac Nasser took over at the top of the Ford Motor Company.

Eliseo Salazar has had a serious accident at Indianapolis Motor Speedway while testing. The 47-year-old Chilean, who races for the March, Ensign and ATS F1 teams in the early 1980s, hit the outside wall of the track in Turn 1.

Paul Stoddart, the boss of Minardi, has confirmed a story we reported at the start of the week that an official complaint has been sent to the FIA about the behavior of the Arrows team in Melbourne.

Wolfgang Reitzle, the head of Ford Motor Company's Premier Automotive Group, is leaving the car industry. He is to be replaced at PAG by Mark Fields, the Ford executive who is currently running Mazda.

The Save Albert Park movement in Melbourne has in recent years attracted some unusual folk. The Australian Grand Prix they are there to stop has been a huge success and the few remaining members of SAP are the subject of ridicule from most of the Melbourne population.

Ralf Schumacher was the fastest driver at Silverstone on Thursday, the final day of testing at the British circuit in preparation for the Spanish GP.

Renault has for a long time had its "Pub" on the Champs Elysee in Paris, this is not as one might think a place where one can get a drink but rather a showroom where Renault displays its wares.

Ferrari is keen to pull in as big a crowd as possible at its exhibition in the Contemporary Art Museum in Tokyo and has just announced that the show will include the prototype of the yet-to-be-seen "FX" model.

Hot on the heels of the collapses of Kirch, ITV Digital and the South American PSN network, comes news of a crisis at the heart of France's Canal Plus, the biggest contributor to the Formula One group of companies.