Formula One News — November 2004

Back in the 1950s and 1960s one of the most popular events of the year was the Nassau Speed Week, which attracted many of the top drivers of the day to the Bahamas for a series of races.

The new GP2 series has announced 12 teams which it says will compete this year. The teams are much as expected with the usual Formula 3000 frontrunners Arden, Coloni, BCN, Durango and Super Nova being joined by a variety of new operations including ART, a new team which will be fielded by ASM for Nicolas Todt.

There is talk of running the Formula 1 cars through the streets of Melbourne before the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne next year. The event would be an attempt to bring more people to Albert Park.

Ryan Briscoe's chances of racing in Formula 1 seem to be fading with Jordan having decided not to run the Toyota test driver in a test this autumn.

Michael Schumacher has been named Driver of the Year by The Indianapolis Star newspaper, an extraordinary event for a US paper given that interest in F1 in the United States is somewhat limited.

There is plenty of gossip about the Midland F1 programme at the moment, some of it good and some of it bad.

There are suggestions that Michelin is reorganizing its Formula 1 team following the relative lack of success of the programme in 2004.

The BAR-Honda team is to test Alan Van der Merwe, Adam Carroll and James Rossiter as part of its plans to develop a young driver program.

It is not a secret that teams in Formula 1 without manufacturer backing are at a massive disadvantage. The best that the private teams can hope for these days is a secondary factory supply,

Will Davison says that his test with Minardi has inspired him to try to restart his racing career in Europe.

The Turkish government last Thursday became the 38th to ratify the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the international treaty which is aimed at restricting tobacco advertising of tobacco.

The new Ferrari F2005 will not make its debut next year until after the first three or four races. The team will instead rely on an updated version of the all-conquering 2004 car.

Two former employees of Ferrari are to be tried in Italy on charges of industrial espionage. A third man who was being investigated has been cleared. The first hearings are expected to take place next spring.

The Formula 3 Euroseries champion, Jamie Green, will test for McLaren next week.

Those of you expecting to see a story about a Grand Prix team from Holland and Canada are going to be disappointed.

Nicola Larini has been signed to join Alain Menu in the Chevrolet team in the FIA World Touring Car Championship campaign next year. The 40 year-old Italian has been a hugely successful touring car driver in recent years with Alfa Romeo but decided to switch to General Motors.

It was an interesting four days of testing in Barcelona but not too many conclusions should be drawn from the lap times as some teams were clearly not going for lap times.

For the last seven years Sauber has used Sauber Petronas-badged Ferrari V10 engines. It has been an agreeable deal for both sides with Ferrari only too keen to soak up the large sums of money supplied for the engines by Petronas and Sauber happy to play a quiet role and build up the team.

The State Opening of Parliament in Britain is not really of much interest to Formula 1 fans but, for the record, the latest session began on Tuesday and one of the first moves made by members of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition was to table something called an Early Day Motion (EDM).

The ever-weakening US dollar is hurting the Formula 1 teams more and more as it sinks in value against the Euro. The dollar is now worth only 1.33 compared to almost parity in January 2003.

Brian Barwick, the head of ITV Sport, has left the TV channel to become the new head of the Football Association. The FA looks after the development of soccer in Britain and is the governing body of the sport in the UK.

Sweden's Bjorn Wirdheim, who was Jaguar Racing's test and reserve driver will not be continuing with Red Bull Racing. Wirdheim had been due to run in the test at Barcelona and at Jerez but the team has now decided to continue with Vitantonio Liuzzi.

Eddie Jordan and Christian Horner are believed to be only days away from announcing a deal which will see the team pass into the hands of the owner of the Arden International Formula 3000 team.

Belgium's Jeffrey Van Hooydonk will test a Minardi F1 car at Misano later this week.

The Formula 1 teams continued to test in Barcelona and at the end of the day of running it was Felipe Massa who emerged fastest overall in his Sauber.