Formula One News — August 2006

It is worth noting that ITV yesterday removed its chief executive Charles Allen, following poor advertising results in recent months. The television company is suffering because of the migration of its traditional viewers to digital stations.

Although there are still i's to be dotted and t's to be crossed, the basis of a deal over engines for 2007 and 2008 has now been struck between the FIA and the GPMA. This has still to go through the other non-aligned teams and it is possible that one or two might take the opportunity to demand more concessions.

Marc Goossens was a useful open-wheeler driver in Europe in the 1990s. He won the British Formula Ford title and finished third in the British Formula 3 Championship in 1993 going on to win races in Formula 3000 in 1996 and 1997.

There are reports that the Ford Motor Company is trying to sell Jaguar and Land Rover as a package. The US car giant would probably seek to retain a minority shareholding in the company, suggesting that the plan is to find a financial group rather than another car company to buy the business.

We hear that Ferrari has tested some GP2 Bridgestone slick tyres to see the kind of performance jump that these might bring. The answer is that they were around two seconds a lap faster than the existing tyres - a logical result given the extra rubber that is in contact with the road.

Michael Schumacher is behaving oddly. He made a stupid mistake in qualifying in Hungary and paid for it with a penalty that dropped him to 11th on the grid. In the race his driving ability was as brilliant as ever, but his strategic thinking seemed to have gone to pieces in the final laps of the race.

Red Bull Racing has confirmed today that David Coulthard will continue to drive for the team in 2007 and that his team-mate will be Mark Webber.

For the last month or two Formula 1 has been looking rather frail. The show has not been up to much and while Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso have emerged as two men in search of a title, the races have been rather less than action-packed. But the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix was a many-splendoured piece of theatre.

With Mark Webber signed at Red Bull Racing the next announcement due will be the signing of Heikki Kovalainen as Giancarlo Fisichella's team mate at Renault. There are already reports in Finland that this has happened and that would make sense given that the driver market is now on the move.

At a meeting today in Nice, the FIA and the GPMA agreed terms for the engines to be used in 2007. Engines will be stabilised from this year's Chinese Grand Prix and will be frozen throughout 2007.

Former Simtek F1 team owner, Benetton chief designer and FIA consultant Nick Wirth is to be a major player in the forthcoming bid for Honda to win the Le Mans 24 Hours.

Tonio Liuzzi has a right to feel rather abused at the moment. It is looking more and more likely that Red Bull is going to keep him in Scuderia Toro Rosso next year rather than promoting him to Red Bull Racing and he is being blamed for the crash that took Kimi Raikkonen out of the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Mark Webber will join Red Bull Racing next year. The confirmation of the deal is expected within the next couple of days.

BMW and Jacques Villeneuve have announced the end of the road together.

Former Midland F1 sporting director Adrian Burgess has moved to Australia where he has been signed up to run Dick Johnson Racing in the Australian V8 Supercar series.

While the F1 men were in Hungary there was action elsewhere in the world over the weekend with the annual BP Ultimate Masters of Formula 3 extravaganza at Zandvoort, NASCAR at Indianapolis and Formula Nippon at Autopolis.

The exclusion of Robert Kubica from the Hungarian Grand Prix was a great shame for the young Pole, who had a brilliant debut weekend as an F1 race driver. Sadly his car was found to be two kilograms underweight at the end and so had to be excluded

Nelson Piquet Jr had a perfect weekend in Hungary winning both GP2 races and picking up points for pole position and two fastest laps. Championship leader Lewis Hamilton had a tough time after failing to set a time in qualifying.

There is much speculation about the F1 calendar at the moment with odd announcements from Australia and Bahrain about the dates of the first three races. Such leaks are usually frowned upon.

McLaren is expected to announce shortly that Pedro de la Rosa will now race for the team in Turkey and at Monza following his impressive second place in Hungary. The team has yet to decide what it is going to do next year.

FIA President Max Mosley in on holiday at the moment in the south of France but will meet with GPMA chairman Burkhard Goeschel today in Nice for more talks about how to settle the problem of what to do with engines in 2007.

Hungarian GP - Race Notes

Robert Kubica has been disqualified from the Hungarian Grand Prix after his Sauber-BMW was found to be 2 kilograms underweight.

Hungarian GP - Sunday Photos

Hungarian GP - Sunday Press Conference