Formula One News — June 2004

F1 aspirant Jeff Gordon gave his rivals in the NASCAR Nextel Cup an indication of his skills as a road racer on Sunday when he blitzed the opposition on the twists and turns at Sears Point in California, scoring his 67th NASCAR victory.

While talk of a Grand Prix in the streets of New York still seems to be a distant dream, the city is showing signs of interest in motorsport and this week is playing host this week to American Le Mans Series cars.

McLaren protege Lewis Hamilton won his first victory in the Eurocup Formula 3 Championship at the Norisring on Saturday after his major rivals in the race ran into trouble.

Marc Gene, the test driver of the Williams team, was busy doing pit stops in the course of testing on Thursday and Friday at Jerez de la Frontera.

Perhaps as an illustration of the precarious financing in Formula 3000 at the moment, there have been a lot of midseason changes in the driver line-ups in the FIA International Championship.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are the latest governments to sign up for the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.

There have been the (perhaps inevitable) rumours that Jacques Villeneuve will join the BMW Williams F1 team at the forthcoming French GP. These are preposterous. Villeneuve has not tested for the team and there are no plans for him to test for the team.

Christian Klien will have to miss the Jaguar Racing test in Barcelona this week after cutting his finger badly on a fan which is used for cooling the brakes of the cars.

All is not rosy in the Minardi garden, despite Zsolt Baumgartner's World Championship point at the United States Grand Prix in Indianapolis. The team is reported to be less thn impressed with the efforts of its lead driver Gianmaria Bruni and we have heard a variety of stories about possible replacements.

Stefan Johansson says he wants to run his own Formula 1 team. The 48-year-old Swede, who raced in F1 from 1980 to 1991 with a variety of teams including McLaren and Ferrari, has been based in America since leaving F1.

Jacques Regis has launched an stinging attack on the way in which Max Mosley runs the international automobile federation.

There are rumours today suggesting that Flavio Briatore might be moving to take charge of Toyota's F1 team in 2006. These have been doing the rounds for some time but have come into the spotlight thanks to an article in the French magazine Autohebdo.

FIA President Max Mosley is planning to invoke Article 7.5 of the Concorde Agreement at the forthcoming FIA F1 Commission next Monday. This gives him the right to change the F1 regulations on the grounds of safety.

As we exclusively reported in October last year, Michael Payne is to join the Formula One group as number two to Bernie Ecclestone.

Michael Payne, the International Olympic Committee's director of global broadcast and media, is leaving his position after the Olympic Games this summer in Athens and is joining Formula One Management as a special advisor.

The last few days have seen a rush of 14 countries signing up with the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, bringing the total of signatories to 138 out of around 200 countries in the world.

The current instability in Formula 3000 has been highlighted in recent days with a number of significant changes in the line-up for the next races.

Michael Schumacher is the world's highest paid sportsman, at least according to Forbes Magazine in the United States.

The United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis is set for the weekend of June 19 next year, the same weekend as this year's successful event.

David Coulthard will not be racing for McLaren next year but it is entirely possible that the Scotsman will stay with the team as its test and reserve driver.

For the next two months Renault is celebrating its competition history at the Atelier Renault on the Champs Elysees in Paris, tracing the success of the company from the earliest days to the modern era.

The French Grand Prix looks like breaking even this year, despite the problems over the event in the course of the winter.

The FIA has explained how the timing screens at Indianapolis recorded that Michael Schumacher crossed the line ahead of Rubens Barrichello at the end of the first Safety Car period, at the end of the fifth lap of the United States Grand Prix.

Traditionally Renault likes to announce its drivers at the French Grand Prix and it is expected that the two current incumbents will be kept on for another season, despite recent rumours that Jarno wanted more money than Renault was willing to pay.

Ralf Schumacher is now back at his home in Austria, recovering from a heavy concussion and bruising to his back following what is believed to be the biggest accident yet recorded by the FIA data recorders. Our sources say that Ralf was subjected to something in the region of 70G.