Formula One News — December 2002

The FIA says that it will ban all tobacco sponsorship in motorsport in 2006, having worked with the World Health Organisation in recent years. But this is not good enough for Europe and the F1 community is beginning to lose patience with the politcians in Brussels.

Pre-season testing continued Thursday in with six of the teams working at the Jerez and Barcelona circuits.

The European Union is making life difficult for Formula 1 at the moment with a ban on the use of words such as "mild" and "light" from tobacco products which are sold in the European Union.

Bernie Ecclestone has told the BBC that although he has axed his pay-per-view TV service it does not mean that the Formula One Television operation will disappear completely. Ecclestone is in the process of negotiating deals under which Formula One would become the host broadcaster for races around the world.

Jordan announced Thursday that data storage media company Imation has extended its partnership with the team.

The FIA World Council meets in Monaco tomorrow morning and it is anticipated that the big issue will be the European Union's insistence to push ahead with its tobacco sponsorship ban for the middle of 2005.

There have been a variety of rumours floating around for the last couple of days about a major cutback of the staff involved in the Formula One Television company. The number of redundancies involved is not entirely certain with figures we have heard ranging from 75 to 250.

The German newsagency DPA is reporting this morning that Oliver Behring, the man who was going to invest in the Arrows F1 with his German Grand Prix Racing GmbH company, has told them that the contract with the team has been cancelled.

The Belgian Chamber of Deputies yesterday debated the amendment which might have saved the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps by allowing tobacco advertising until the European tobacco ban comes into force at the end of July 2005.

It is no secret that Jacques Villeneuve is not expecting to stay at British American Racing beyond the end of 2003 and Villeneuve's manager Craig Pollock has already begun a campaign to keep Jacques's name in the frame in 2004.

We hear from normally reliable sources that Silverstone may have passed into the control of a Mr Ecclestone, or at least one of the companies in which he has an interest.

The Italian industrial company Fiat is in trouble with creditors pressuring the company to find a solution to the problem of Fiat Auto, the automobile company which is currently losing money at a vast rate.

Tomas Scheckter is free to drive for Target Chip Ganassi Racing in the Indy Racing League next year, following the news that Eddie Cheever has given up his legal challenge because of the problems which the Tom Walkinshaw Racing organisation is having at the moment.

The Belgian Grand Prix is definitely not going to get onto the 2003 Formula 1 calendar. The Belgian Chamber of Deputies has rejected an amendment to the new tobacco advertising law by a narrow margin. This means that the law will go ahead as planned with a tobacco ban being introduced on August 1 next year

Former F1 driver Aguri Suzuki has been busy in recent years building up a network to help young Japanese racing drivers become successful on the international scene. His ARTA programme has resulted in several drivers making an impact in European racing, notably in Formula 3 in Germany and France

Eddie Jordan has a lot of things to worry about at the moment - not least finding enough sponsorship for the 2003 season. We also believe that Cosworth Racing is asking for rather more guarantees than has been the case in the past - because of the money that has been lost because of bad debts.

The announcement on Tuesday that the Fiat chief executive Gabriele Galateri is to resign has caused more worries down at Maranello where the future of Ferrari remains linked to the crises going on at Fiat. Galateri had been in charge since June.

Morgan Grenfell's case against Arrows and Tom Walkinshaw began in the High Court in London on Tuesday to decide whether or not a financial guarantee made by the team is stuill valid despite a restructuring of the company which was supposedly agreed in July 2001.

It is expected that half the Formula 1 teams will be allowed to test for two hours each Friday during a Grand Prix weekend this year, having signed up for the sessions.

EM.TV, the former owner of part of the Formula One group of companies, has won a court order in Jersey to block the seizure of its stake by a consortium of banks which was owed money by the now-defunct Kirch group. But the ruling is only a preliminary injunction pending a full court case.

The last few days have seen a variety of stories about the problems that exist between Formula One Management, the FIA and the Grand Prix World Championship (GPWC) organisation. We look at the background to the problems.

The Financial Times newspaper is reporting that the negotiations between the Formula 1 authorities and the automobile manufacturers have reached an impasse and that Bernie Ecclestone has cancelled a December 11 meeting with the Grand Prix World Championship organisation because it failed to respond to a proposal.

Despite a lot of misplaced excitement about Jos Verstappen's return to Formula 1 we hear from Germany that his fellow Dutchman Christjian Albers visited Stuttgart earlier this week to tell Mercedes-Benz racing chief Norbert Haug that he will not be racing for the company in the German Touring Car Championship next year.

The word on the street in F1 circles is that former Sauber driver Felipe Massa has found a substantial sponsor to back his efforts to land an F1 drive in 2003. The suggestion we have heard is that Massa has $4m worth of backing.

Sauber and Ferrari continued testing at Jerez Friday with Nick Heidfeld and Luca Badoer, respectively.