Formula One News — February 2005

The Midland F1 operation says it would like to run a Russian driver in tests and has named Roman Rusinov as the man most likely. Rusinov is a sports car driver at the moment but comes from the French Formula Campus school and so has at least some credibility.

Antonio Pizzonia's manager Jayme Brito was spotted this morning at Frankfurt Airport, boarding a flight to Chicago and it does not take a rocket scientist to work out that the Brazilian was off to have a look around some of the Champ Car operations to see what might be available for his client.

The Formula 1 manufacturers, with the exception of Ferrari, will meet again next Wednesday to move forward from their position from the recent meeting at which they unanimously agreed on a set of "governing principles" which they believe represent an appropriate framework for the sport in the future.

Having now had time to examine the documents released in recent days by the FIA, an interesting picture has emerged of the ongoing dispute between the federation and the majority of the Formula 1 teams. By far the most interesting document is a letter that from Minardi boss Paul Stoddart to Max Mosley.

The signing of Nick Heidfeld as the second Williams driver has made life rather difficult for Antonio Pizzonia. He can stay on as the third Williams driver and hope that BMW favourite Nick Heidfeld does such a bad job that he is removed from the seat.

As we exclusively predicted last week Spain's Borja Garc­a is to get a test drive with the Toyota F1 team. The reigning Spanish Formula 3 Champion will get his chance to drive an F1 car for the first time at Paul Ricard on April 16.

Red Bull supported Swiss driver Neel Jani has been signed to drive alongside Spanish F3 champion Borja Garcia in the Racing Engineering GP2 team. The team is expected to have backing from Repsol and Red Bull.

The current kerfuffle in Formula 1 circles about the latest British American Racing gearbox seems odd thing given that the teams involved (and we believe there are more than one of them) are not generally stupid enough to build systems which are blatantly illegal.

The new Midland-Jordan Formula 1 will announce this afternoon that it has signed contracts with India's Narain Karthikeyan and Portugal's Tiago Monteiro. The news means that the team will go into the new season without either driver having any racing experience in Formula 1.

There is still some doubt as to a number of drives in the new GP2 series presumably because one or two Formula 1 drives is still in play and drivers like Robert Doornbos might still be available for the GP2 teams.

France's ASM Formule 3 dominated the Formula 3 Eurocup last season with drivers Jamie Green and Alexandre Premat finishing 1-2 in the series with the team's third driver Eric Salignon sixth overall.

In a sudden burst of unexpected but welcome transparency, the FIA has published a lengthy set of documents relating to the current negotiations with the Formula 1 teams which detail the various stages of negotiation between FIA President Max Mosley and the team principals.

Renault's managing-director Flavio Briatore had the Formula 1 press corps eating out of his hand as usual at the Renault F1 launch in Monte Carlo and they all left convinced that he might decide not to stay when his contract with Renault runs out at the end of the year.

As we predicted last week Minardi has signed a testing contract with Israel's Chanoch Nissany. The 41-year-old will help the team with its (limited) testing away from the races but wll not be involved at running on Grand Prix weekends.

Aston Martin Racing has announced its six-man driver line-up for 2005. The team will kick off its racing with the Sebring 12 Hours in March. The drivers contracted to race the DBR9s are former F1 drivers David Brabham, Tomas Enge and Pedro Lamy and former F1 test driver Darren Turner.

Fiat and General Motors yesterday failed to reach an agreement on whether or not the US giant must buy the Italian company's ailing car division. There was talk that GM would pay out as much as $2.4bn in cash to get rid of the put option that it signed in 2000. But these rumours were wrong.

Boring old car associations do not really excite Formula 1 fans but it is worth noting that Toyota Motor Europe has applied for membership of the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA).

Narain Karthikeyan's signature on a Formula 1 contract will do Formula 1 no harm at all in India, the country with the world's second largest population. There is a vast population, estimated to be around 1,065m, and there have been some impressive gains in economic investment and output in recent years.

There is always a certain amount of whining and griping in Formula 1 about how hard it is to find money and how there are no big sponsors around these days. Clearly some of the whingers have been missing something.

Renault F1 boss Patrick Faure was not very keen on discussing the GPWC situation at the launch of the new Renault R25 and called for those involved in F1 to stop fighting battles in the media.

Renault F1 boss Patrick Faure says that it is by no means certain that it will stop using Mild Seven after the end of July 2005 when new British and European legislation comes into force to stop tobacco advertising.

Renault went to Monte Carlo to launch its R25 car, to avoid France's restrictive tobacco advertising laws. The team remains sponsored by Mild Seven but it remains to be seen what will happen when the new European anti-tobacco legislation comes into force at the end of July.

FIA President Max Mosley and Deputy President Marco Piccinini were guests of the Renault F1 team at the launch of the new RS25 in Monte Carlo and both Patrick Faure and Flavio Briatore were very careful to say nice things about the new Formula 1 regulations.

We hear that celebrated Formula 1 engineer Gordon Murray is to leave the employ of McLaren after 18 years with the team. The 60-year-old South African engineer was a major player in F1 in the 1970s with the Brabham team, winning two World Championships with Nelson Piquet.

The deal between Nick Heidfeld and Williams was obviously influenced quite heavily by the team's engine supplier BMW although the Williams team prides itself on never being influenced by its sponsors and partners.