Formula One News — April 2005

British driver Katherine Legge drove into the record books at Long Beach at the weekend, becoming the first woman to win a major open-wheel race in the United States.

Singapore has been thinking about F1 - and talking about it - for nearly 20 years.

Red Bull is not a company that likes to buy advertising space. Instead it tends to invest its millions in those participating in events and thus gain publicity by being involved in an activity.

The FIA president Max Mosley is going to have his meeting on April 15 about the rules of Formula 1 in 2008, despite the fact that Ferrari will be the only team present. The other teams have announced that they are not going to attend because they are not ready to make their presentation.

Peter Sauber is not a man who gives away his intentions to all and sundry. However he does enjoy a very close relationship with Roger Benoit, the Formula 1 reporter of Switzerland's Blick newspaper.

Ferrari is now completely isolated in Formula 1 politics - and that cannot be a good thing.

The Australian Grand Prix Corporation is getting itself into a knot over the question of a drink-drive charge against one of its senior executives and the local press in Melbourne is in hot pursuit.

Former Grand Prix driver Christian Fittipaldi is finally returning to race in Brazil.

One hundred years ago, the Gordon Bennett Cup was held on the Circuit d'Auvergne, near Clermont-Ferrand.

Ricardo Sperafico and Fabrizio del Monte are the final drivers to be confirmed for the upcoming Champ Car season opener at Long Beach this weekend. Sperafico will race alongside Oriol Servia at Dale Coyne Racing, Gaston Mazzacane having disappeared from the scene, presumably because of lack of money.

Jacques Villeneuve's press release yesterday was important in that it existed. For some reason Jacques felt the need to explain the current situation at Sauber, something which in any normal circumstance the team would have done if it felt such a thing was necessary.

When Dubai's Sheikh Maktoum Hasher Maktoum Al Maktoum announced a year ago his plans for the A1 Grand Prix series there were, not surprisingly, a lot of cynics who believed that the new championship would never get off the ground.

The Mercedes-Benz company has been having a roller-coaster ride recently with the recent announcement of a recall of 1.3m vehicles because of technical problems. This has done serious damage to the company's image of being a quality car manufacturer.

A sixteenth century country house may seem an unlikely place to discuss the future of the world's most technologically-advanced sport but the meeting yesterday between nine teams and five manufacturers at Great Fosters near Egham, in Surrey, appears to have moved things on.

The British Racing Drivers' Club announced today that an Extraordinary General Meeting has been called by members for the purpose of removing Sir Jackie Stewart from his roles as president and as a director of the club.

Jenson Button and Takuma Sato set the surprise pace on the third day of testing at the Circuit de Catalunya near Barcelona with Button lapping in 1m14.237s and Takuma a 1m14.247s.

The nine Formula 1 teams have decided that they will not be attending Max Mosley's meeting to discuss the rules for 2008 on April 15 because, they say, they are not ready to put forward their proposals for the future.

The former Formula 1 racer Cliff Allison has died at the age 73. Born in Brough, a town in the Eden Valley, at the foot of the Pennines hills, Allison came from a family which ran a garage in the town.

Jacques Villeneuve's relationship with Sauber is obviously getting rather strained. After testing on Thursday Villeneuve issued the following statement.

The Australian Grand Prix Corporation is in the news in Melbourne this week following the conviction of one of its top executives for drink-driving.

The nine Formula 1 teams which have yet to agree to a new Concorde Agreement from 2008 will meet in London tomorrow to hear from their various working committees about the developing plans for a new World Championship.

The GP2 series held its qualifying sessions for the alloaction of its numbering at Paul Ricard today and the result was that America's Scott Speed won iSport International the top two numbers with a best lap of 1m19.414s.

Formula 1 reject Giorgio Pantano set the fastest time of GP2 testing on Tuesday at Paul Ricard, at the wheel of a car run by Super Nova Racing.

Bernard Dudot is not retiring, despite the fact that 66-year-old French engineer has now left the employment of Renault F1.

Honda has named Yasuhiro Wada as the replacement for Shoichi Tanaka as president of Honda Racing Development Ltd, the British-based company which oversees the Japanese company's F1 activities.