Formula One News — February 2005

The Australian Grand Prix would normally be scheduled for the first weekend in March in 2006. The actual date would most likely be March 5. The only problem with this is that the city is due to play host to the XVIII Commonwealth Games between March 15 and 26.

The word on the street in Munich is that the management of BMW Motorsport has already told Red Bull Racing that it will not be supplying them with engines in 2006. If true, this is interesting as it either suggests that BMW is not keen to supply another team or it means that the company has done a deal with another team.

SKF, the Swedish manufacturer of automotive components, has signed a deal to enter NASCAR with a technical partnership with Richard Childress Racing. The SKF logos will be seen on all three of RCR's cars this year in the NASCAR Nextel Cup series.

Alexandre Premat, runner-up to Jamie Green in last year's Formula 3 Euroseries has been confirmed as Nico Rosberg's team in the ART team, which is being run by Jean Todt's son Nicolas with engineering by the ASM team, which ran Premat and Green last year.

Formula 1 testing has been going on now for about a month and, according to our colleagues at F1Total.com, the man who has done the most testing in 2005 is BMW Williams's Nick Heidfeld, who has completed 13 days of tests and 3,021 miles of running.

It has been a long time coming but there is no surprise that Ferrari has let it be known the Italian car company considered leaving the sport before Bernie Ecclestone offered a major league pay-off to get the team to stay in F1.

While most people are watching Formula 1 cars testing down in Spain, there is an important battle going on between Paul Stoddart and Max Mosley over the way in which the FIA has been making rules in recent months.

Plans for Mexico to hold a Grand Prix in 2006 appear to have hit problems with construction work on the project being held up by disputes over whether or not the land can be used for a racing circuit.

In recent years the Prema Power team has run cars for Toyota in the Formula 3 Euroseries and in the Italian Formula Renault championship with F3 cars last year for Franck Perera, Roberto Streit and Katsuyuki Hiranaka and Formula Renault entries for Kohei Hirate, Kamui Kobayashi and Ben Clucas.

David Coulthard is not one of those racing drivers who is blinded by his hopes and admits that the 2005 season is going to be a tough one for his new team Red Bull Racing.

John S Zink has died in hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma at the age of 75. Zink was a team owner in Champ Car racing in the 1950s and 1960s and won the Indianapolis 500 in 1955 and 1956 with drivers Bob Sweikert and Pat Flaherty. At the time the race was a Grande Epreuve and part of the FIA Formula 1 World Championship.

The new Jordan EJ15 is a tidied up version of the 2004 car, in line with the new regulations and fitted with the latest Toyota V10 engine. The team was planning to build a second car for later in the year.

Holland's Robert Doornbos was expected to be one of the Jordan F1 drivers in 2005 and got a shock when the team's new owners decided to go with Tiago Monteiro and Narain Karthikeyan.

There are lots of reports today about how Mika Hakkinen has given up on a return to Formula 1. This coincides neatly with the announcement of the latest Mercedes-Benz DTM announcement. However, careful investigation of what the Finn actually said to Finland's Italehti newspaper reveals that he did not say that he will not test.

The legal firm Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw has been giving details of its involvement in Midland's entry into Formula 1.

Nelson Piquet Jr, the British Formula 3 Champion, is to test this week with the BAR-Honda team. The test has been planned for some time and was requested by British American Tobacco.

Mercedes-Benz has announced its plans for the coming season in the DTM series with regular drivers Bernd Schneider, Jean Alesi and Gary Paffett being joined by Mika Hakkinen and Jamie Green in the 2005 cars.

Tony George, the owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the man behind the United States Grand Prix at Indianapolis is to become a team owner in his own Indy Racing League series this year, having decided to jump in to help his step-son Ed Carpenter (the son of George's second wife Laura) in the IRL.

There have been lots of stories about mass defections at Jordan since the takeover by Midland F1. There is no doubt that this has caused some disruption but not nearly as much as is being reported.

Red Bull Racing's new car - dubbed the RB1 - will make its first appearance today at Jerez de la Frontera in Spain, where the team will begin testing the car. The RB1 has been produced by the design crew which Red Bull acquired with Jaguar Racing although since then Gunther Steiner has taken over the role of technical director.

Emmanuel Collard had a miserable Formula 1 career. The 33-year-old Frenchman, who won the World Karting title in his teens, went on to win the French Formula Renault title and was in Formula 3000 by the age of 21. In the years that followed he tested for no fewer than six Formula 1 teams but he never raced.

Didier Coton has been around Formula 1 for many years, looking after the careers of Mika Hakkinen, Olivier Panis and Enrique Bernoldi. Coton has now announced the formation of a new management company called Aces Management which will be based in Monaco .

There are some in American racing circles who believe that the RuSport team in Champ Car racing is just one step in a plan that team owner Carl Russo to take America into Formula 1. Russo is 48 and extraordinarily wealthy.

Timo Glock was among the drivers testing Champ Cars last weekend at Sebring in Florida. The German has missed out on a drive in Formula 1 and has been in America looking for a job with Paul Gentilozzi's Rocketsports, which has a drive going alongside Alex Tagliani.

There are stories circulating at the moment that Peter Sauber might sell his team. No-one seems to have noticed the fact that Peter Sauber actually does not own the team.