Formula One News — March 2003

The FIA press conference today in Melbourne is going to be an interesting one as it features a potentially-explosive combinations of personalities: Minardi's Paul Stoddart facing McLaren's Ron Dennis and Sir Frank Williams.

Eddie Jordan has always denied any interest in selling his Formula 1 team but now he is saying that he would do if if necessary - so long as he still had an involvement.

There have been a lot of rumours in Melbourne about problems at Williams but our investigations suggest that things are not nearly as bad as some of the stories which have been circulating.

The FIA President Max Mosley called off his planned trip to Australia because of a screw-up with airline tickets which meant that Mosley was unable to catch the plane on which he was intending to travel.

Gerhard Berger said that he would stay on at BMW if there was a new challenge and so his decision to retire would seem to suggest that the Austrian knows that the Munich care company is not going to start its own F1 team.

BMW Motorsport Director Gerhard Berger will retire from his current role at the end of September. The Austrian says that the decision has come because he wants to spend more time with his family.

And so we head into another new era of Formula 1 and the big question that everyone is trying to answer is whether or not this will make any difference to the pecking order in Formula 1.

Minardi driver Justin Wilson has become the first racing driver to be floated on the London Stock Exchange. Wilson is aiming to raise $2m to pay for his drive with Minardi and is offering investors the chance to double their money and to share 10% of his income until the year 2012.

Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo says that he does not think that parent company Fiat will sell the company. It has been suggested that Fiat might sell off some of its 56% share in the business in an initial public offering to raise money to help support the main Fiat automobile business.

There has been much speculation about how the new qualifying rules will affect the starting grid in 2003. The biggest variable will be how much fuel a team decides to run in qualifying and start the race with, as the teams will not be allowed to add fuel between qualifying and the start of the race.

Minardi boss Paul Stoddart has responded to what he calls a "vicious attack" from his McLaren counterpart, Ron Dennis, by saying he should remember back to his start in the sport.

Bernie Ecclestone sees a new Concorde Agreement as the solution to the current rift between some of the teams and the FIA, and essential in ensuring future health of the sport.

Rule number one: never annoy a billionaire. American billionaire Kirk Kerkorian was very upset back in 1998 when he believes the shareholders of the Chrysler Coprotaion were misled by Daimler-Benz chairman Jurgen Schrempp. Now he is suing...

Toyota has won its very first event in the Indy Racing League. On Sunday New Zealand's Scott Dixon won the Toyota Indy 300 at Homestead in his Target Chip Ganassi entry.

The GPWC, which is planning to start its own rival series to Formula 1, is looking for someone to run the planned championship - although it is by no means clear whether there will actually be a job for the candidate chosen.

Ferrari has announced a three-year sponsorship deal with the Olympus company, a world leader in digital appliances and medical equipment.

The world was expecting poor figures for 2002 from Fiat but the announcement that the company made a loss of $4bn was twice what was expected. The figure was boosted by the company booking a large number of one-off charges in order to put all the bad news in one package

Tom Walkinshaw's problems are far from over. The boss of the now defunct Arrows F1 team and the TWR Group was heavily criticised by a High Court judge this week. Mr Justice Pumfrey delivered his judgement on the trial of the various preliminary issues in Morgan Grenfell's action against Arrows