Formula One News — January 2006

Sebastien Loeb has won the World Rally Championship for the last two years and is no slouch in racing cars either having raced for Pescarolo in the Le Mans 24 Hours. On the road he drives a Ferrari and makes no secret of the fact that he would like to get a test in Formula 1 car to see what it is like.

The new McLaren MP4-21 ran for the first time at Barcelona on Monday, the team keeping its orange livery for the moment. The car is an evolution of the successful MP4-20, which won 10 of the 19 races last year.

Ferrari is expected to announce later today that it has signed a new sponsorship deal with the drinks company Martini & Rossi. The Turin-based drinks company has a long history of involvement in motor racing but in recent years has been out of the sport.

Former Formula 1 driver Derek Daly set up the Derek Daly Performance Driving Academy in 1996 in Las Vegas and has been running operations there while also working as commentator on racing events for various TV channels.

Four of the 11 Formula 1 teams will launch their new V8-engined cars this week with Ferrari due to unveil the F2006 (or whatever it will be designated) on Tuesday at Mugello.

George Pyne, the chief operating of NASCAR, will leave the US racing circus this week to become president of the International Management Group, the sports marketing business founded in 1960 by the late Mark McCormack.

The F1 in Schools competition came to climax last week with the World Championship between 17 teams from 11 different countries. The competition is for 11-18 year olds to design and model F1 cars, formed in balsa wood and powered by carbon dioxide which are then run on a 20-metre track.

There appears to be some confusion over the future of the Belgian Grand Prix with a Belgian politician saying the race is off and other sources saying that the race is still on.

The Formula 1 testing continued in Spain this week with McLaren, Williams, Toyota and Honda in action over a four day period at Jerez. BMW Sauber was by itself at Valencia following the launch of its new car.

South African tycoon Anton Rupert has died at the age of 89. Rupert was the man who turned Rothmans into a global brand and led the company into motor racing after his Rembrandt company, which was started in 1948 in South Africa, bought the Rothmans brand in 1972.

The word from Belgium is that the Belgian Grand Prix is off because work at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit cannot be completed in time for the race. Politician Serge Kubla, who is a member of the opposition in the Wallonia regional government, told a radio station in Belgium that the race is off.

Williams F1 has been an innovator in sponsorship for some years and the team has just announced a deal with Dutch multinational employment company Randstad.

Ilmor Engineering is expanding its activities in NASCAR with the announcement that it has signed a deal to build Dodge engines for Biagi Brothers Racing in the Busch Series. The team will be running cars for driver Mark Green. Back in 2004 Ilmor built Ford engines for the team.

The authorities at Hockenheim have announced that this year's racing programme will go ahead as planned, a move which is intended to calm fears that races could be cancelled because of the track's financial problems.

A month ago the British Racing Drivers Club was close to a decision on who it will partner with to redevelop the Silverstone circuit. A list of possible candidates had been reduced to three and a decision was due.

McLaren protege Lewis Hamilton has finally been confirmed with the ART team in GP2. The 21-year-old Briton will join Alexandre Premat, who has a year of experience in the series.

There is a certain irony in the fact that the FIA World Rally Championship, which kicks off this weekend with the Monte Carlo Rally, is short of manufacturers. The FIA is keen to get new car builders in to bolster the series and is creating new rules which it is hoped will achieve that goal.

Former MotoGP rider Max Biaggi did just 10 laps of Silverstone in wet conditions earlier today, driving a 2005 Jordan fitted with a Toyota V8 engine. The test proved very little but the biker is currently looking for work having been dropped by Honda in MotoGP at the end of last year.

There will be a memorial service for Keith Duckworth on Thursday, February 23. Duckworth was the designer of the legendary Cosworth DFV Formula 1 engine which won a total of 155 victories in the course of its history.

There is a lot of Japanese money in Formula 1 and that means that when there are shocks on the Nikkei, the Japanese stock exchange, it is wise for Formula 1 to keep an eye on what is happening.

Renault principal Flavio Briatore told Agence France Presse the other day that he was not happy with the way in which McLaren signed a contract with Fernando Alonso.

The baseball World Series is a contest limited to teams from the United States and Canada as it is assumed that no-one outside Major League Baseball could win.

Max Biaggi has long dallied with the idea of one day being a Formula 1 driver and today and tomorrow will be at Silverstone to test drive for MF1 Racing during a hiatus in his motorcycling career following problems with Honda in the MotoGP series.

While the FIA is continuing down its path to try to control materials in Formula 1, the world of materials technology moves on and in addition to the ever-advancing area of nanotechnology, which could have some fascinating applications in the sport, there is also more down-to-earth work going on.

Timo Glock used to be a Jordan Formula 1 driver, and a pretty good one based on a limited number of appearances. Then he went off to America and impressed in his first season in Champ Car with Rocketsports.