Formula One News — August 2002

Those who have known him for a long time always agree that one can never write off Tom Walkinshaw. He is not dead until they nail the lid down on his coffin. On Wednesday afternoon Walkinshaw announced that he has signed the c"heads of agreemento" with an American investor

The announcement that Jacques Villeneuve is not going to CART next year has started a domino effect in Formula with Olivier Panis being named as the new driver for Toyota. Mika Salo and Allan McNish are both being dropped

The beginning of September is traditionally a moment at which options lapse and deals are done and the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa usually results in a number of announcements for the future.

The news revealed by CART team owner Gerald Forsythe that Jacques Villeneuve has turned down a $50m offer from him to race in CART in 2003 and then return to F1 for two more years with BAR is an indication that the top drivers are going to have to pay more attention to the real world.

Jacques Villeneuve has turned down a three-year $50m deal to race in CART in 2003 and then return to F1 in 2004 and 2005. According to the Journal de Montreal, the offer came from CART team owner Gerald Forsythe who, as a BAR shareholder, was working in league with David Richards of BAR.

At the Hungarian Grand Prix there is no doubt at all that there were moves going on to nudge the Ford Motor Company towards selling Jaguar Racing to Red Bull. It was a deal which made a lot of sense for all concerned. It seems now that, for whatever reason, Ford is not going to go down that path.

Monaco will be a very different looking place when the Formula 1 circus arrives next year. On Monday a vast 350m long floating platform, which consists of 160,000 tons of concrete, arrived in Monaco. This will be used to double the mooring capacity in the port, around which the Grand Prix is held

The Germans are preparing to go to the polls to elect a new Chancellor with the two candidates: incumbent Gerhard Schroeder and challenger Edmund Stoiber running close in the opinion polls. Formula 1 could be affected...

The recent races have highlighted that this year Bridgestone is well ahead of Michelin in terms of performance. This is odd when one considers how good the French tires were last year.

The much talked-about Russian Grand Prix is not quite dead - at least not according to the head of the Moscow Tourist Board Grigory Antyufeyev. He told the Izvestia newspaper that he was sure that the race v"will happen, as we have planned, in 2004 ".

Peter Sauber has offered Felipe Massa the job of being the Swiss team's test and development driver. The young Brazilian has yet to decide what to do now that he has lost his seat for 2003.

The Arrows team will not be in Spa-Francorchamps this weekend - although the news has yet to made official. But, amazingly, this does not mean that the team is yet dead. The current impasse in negotiation is the same as it was in Hungary.

The Telefonica World Series by Nissan (aka Formula Nissan) kicks off again this coming weekend at Magny Cours after nearly two months without a race. The battle for the championship is on in the course of the final five races with former F1 driver Ricardo Zonta under threat from Belgium's rising star Bas Leinders.

Mario Andretti, the Formula 1 World Champion of 1978 and one of America's best known racing names, is to be named a director of the CART organisation shortly. Mario has long been a CART supporter and is currently talking about starting his own team next year, as an offshoot of Newman Haas Racing.

As the final decisions are being made over who will be picked to be finalists in the Red Bull Driver Academy - to find a Formula 1 star from the United States of America - AJ Allmendinger continues to demand attention.

There was much comparison going on between Formula 1 and CART last weekend when CART visited the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal - the first time the two series have used the same track in the same year.

The word from America is that Gerald Forsythe has offered Jacques Villeneuve a big deal to race next year in the United States - but Jacques has to make his decision within the next 18 hours.

As we suggested would happen yesterday, Heinz-Harald Frentzen has let it be known that he has signed a one-year contract to race for the Sauber Petronas team next season. It is anticipated that Heinz-Harald will replace Brazil's Felipe Massa.

When Jenson Button signed for British American Racing a few weeks ago, Antonio Pizzonia's future suddenly looked considerably better than it had before. Pizzonia moved into the position of being Williams's ie"chosen oneev" for the future.

The suggestion that has been doing the rounds - that Eddie Irvine has signed a new long-term deal with Jordan Grand Prix and the suggestion that Toyota is still going to do a deal with Cristiano Da Matta, would seem to open the way for Heinz-Harald Frentzen to join Nick Heidfeld at Sauber next year.

The Motor Sports Association, the national governing body of motor sport in Britain, has joined forces with the Motorsport Industry Association to establish the Motorsport Strategy Development Group to combine the efforts of the sport and the industry in the years ahead.

Barry Sheene has been commentating on motor racing for some years in Australia after emigrating from Britain after his competition career on two wheels and on four wheels ended in the late 1980s.

Michael Schumacher, Giancarlo Fisichella and others will join forces with big names from the fashion world in a football match in Italy on September 11 this year to raise money for the victims of the terrorist attacks a year ago.

The case between Arrows and Morgan Grenfell, which was due to take place on Wednesday, has been adjourned until at least October. The big issue facing the team therefore is the winding-up petition issued by Champion Recruitment Limited.

So Ford Motor Company sources say that there are no plans to sell Jaguar Racing. In some ways this is not a surprise because those who think back three years will remember that Jacques Nasser went to the German GP and denied the very existence of any plan to turn Stewart Grand Prix into a Jaguar team