Formula One News — May 2002

There have been rumors doing the rounds about the future of Niki Lauda at Jaguar Racing for some time - but there is nothing much to back them up.

CART has been going through a bit of a rough patch of late with several teams struggling to make ends meet in the difficult economic circumstances.

There has been a lot of negative comment in recent days about the recent performances of Jordan driver Takuma Sato.

Jos Verstappen has an extraordinary amount of support from his fellow countrymen and there was more than a little discontent over the winter when Jos was dumped at the last moment by the Arrows team to make way for Heinz-Harald Frentzen.

There are rumors in the United States that CART chief executive Chris Pook has been talking to a number of Formula 3000 team about the possibility of them switching to the US-based open-wheeler series next year.

The British GP organizers have now published the program of events and the racing follows much the same lines as most Grands Prix with supporting events from the Formula 3000 teams and from the Porsche Michelin Supercup.

The British will be celebrating the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II in the course of the next four days with Monday and Tuesday having been declared national holidays and a string of events being planned all over the country.

South African Breweries is one of the world's most powerful brewing companies and is currently in the process of buying Miller Brewing from the Philip Morris group of companies.

Rubens Barrichello was the fastest man at Silverstone Thursday, for the third and final day of testing at the British circuit before the teams head to Montreal for the Canadian GP.

Jordan Grand Prix was left with a pile of automotive rubble after Takuma Sato's accident in Austria, from which the Japanese driver emerged with only a few bruises.

The automobile manufacturers involved in Formula 1 met again at Monaco on Saturday to keep in touch with the latest developments with regard to the Kirch situation.

BAR, the only team yet to score championship points in 2002, will introduce a revised version of the BAR004 in Montreal next weekend.

It has not been much remarked but the progress of Australian driver Rob Nguyen in Formula 3000 this year has been remarkable.

There has been no reaction so far from the Automobile Club de l'Ouest about the aerodynamic problems which the FIA has warned could occur with the current sports cars.

Paolo Cantarella has been one of the major players in the Grand Prix World Championship BV company's planning for an independent World Championship after the end of the current Concorde Agreement in 2008.

Formula 1 is a huge international sport but faced with the power of the soccer World Cup it is unlikely that there will many column inches left available in newspapers around the world for the Grand Prix circus in the next four weeks of football mania.

The Automobile Club de Monaco gave details of the work that is being planned for the circuit in the years ahead.

Yesterday marked the first board meeting of Renault-Nissan BV, the holding company of the Franco-Japanese automobile company and is a sign of the increasing integration between the two firms.

The weather remained poor for the second day of testing at Silverstone, where Rubens Barrichello set the pace, ahead of McLaren drivers Kimi Raikkonen and David Coulthard.

Although it will have no effect on Ferrari, the giant Italian firm Fiat could sell its loss-making automobile operations to General Motors.

The Hungarian-born porn star Ilona Staller, better known as Cicciolina, has failed in her bid to become the mayor of the town of Monza.

It is perhaps worth noting that Mecachrome's rumored move to work with Infiniti in the Indy Racing League makes a lot of sense given the recent announcement that the company has opened a factory in Montreal, in league with the Aero company.

Jim Vale, formerly the team manager of Jordan, has joined forces with former Grand Prix driver Larry Perkins to run his Melbourne-based touring car team.

Mecachrome, the engineering company which enjoys close links with Renault Sport, looks likely to be building the Infiniti engines for the Indy Racing League.

There are to be meetings this week to try to reorganize unravel the complicated situation surrounding the Kirch group of companies.