Formula One News — November 2006

The Australian Grand Prix will rely more heavily than ever on Formula 1 cars next year after failing to do a deal to run an event for FIA European GT3 cars.

Tiago Monteiro is to spend this weekend working on the Casinos do Algarve Rally in Portugal, driving the '0' Car, one of the official cars that is driven through the stage 15 minutes before the rally cars to ensure that the course is clear and to warn spectators that the event is about to start.

WilliamsF1 has parted company with its chief executive officer Chris Chapple. Chapple has been with the team for two years and is moving on to "a new challenge", whatever that may be.

Juan Pablo Montoya is hoping to finish his racing season by making his debut in the NASCAR Nextel Cup race at Miami Homestead next weekend, driving a Ganassi Dodge.

A1GP has appointed Pete da Silva as its new chief executive officer. He is currently the chief executive of Siemens in South Africa.

Bridgestone Motorsport has finally managed to complete all the necessary contracts with the F1 teams and will add Renault, McLaren, Honda, BMW Sauber, Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Toro Rosso to its books next year.

There are rumours in the United States that former Minardi F1 team boss Paul Stoddart is going to buy into the CTE/HVM Champ Car team, which is run by former F1 team owner Keith Wiggins, who ran the Pacific Grand Prix operation back in the early 1990s.

Jacques Villeneuve will not be with Roush Racing next season. The former F1 World Championship had been discussing deals with Roush to run in NASCAR Busch Series races races next year in preparation for a Nextel Cup programme in 2008.

This week the Formula 3 clans will gather at Macau for the 53rd Macau Grand Prix, which will also decide the FIA Formula 3 Intercontinental Cup. There are runners from sixth different national and regional championships.

Sergio Marchionne is a very busy man. Not only has he been overseeing the turnaround of the Fiat group, the parent company of Ferrari, but he has also been personally running Fiat Auto as well.

With the racing season now winding down around the world, this is a time when championships are settled and at the weekend NASCAR star Jimmie Johnson finished second in the Checkers Auto Parts 500 at Phoenix International Raceway to strengthen his position in the championship.

While everyone is going on about new races in Asia, there is not doubt that there is one country in Europe where there are serious attempts going on to get a new race: Spain.

Ferrari has confirmed that Marc Gene will stay with the team next year but says that with the restriction on testing that is coming into effect there may not be much for him to do.

Imola had collected all the money needed to modify the circuit as demanded by the F1 authorities but then the promoter SAGIS was unable to meet the financial demands of the Formula One group and the contract was cancelled.

The Beijing street circuit has been substantially altered in order to solve the problem of the hairpin being too tight. The troublesome Turn 8 is to be moved up to the pit entrance area, where there is sufficient room for the A1 cars to turn, thanks to an intersection which allows a little more space.

Formula 1 travels all over the world, and does business in a wide variety of different countries. Some are better than others but what is clear is that most of them seem to do business without too much sleaze being involved.

Italy's Franco Lucchese, the president of the Automobile Club d'Italia, has been elected the new FIA Deputy President for Mobility and the Automobile, replacing Catalunya's Sebastia Salvado, who held the position for just one year.

As we reported in May, an Indian Grand Prix is creeping ever closer to becoming a reality and the latest project seems to be in the city of Delhi, the nation's capital and the country's third largest city was a population estimated to be around 15m.

Union Properties of Dubai has done a deal with the Formula One group to buy the exclusive rights to develop F1 Theme Parks around the world. The first will be built in Dubai and aims to be open in 2009.

This weekend's A1 GP street race in Beijing has run into trouble because the A1 cars cannot get round the hairpin. The circuit runs down a section of dual-carriageway into the hairpin and then goes back using the other carriageway. The problem was that there is not enough turning space for the cars.

Toyota has announced that Kohei Hirate and Kamui Kobayashi will be involved in testing with the Panasonic Toyota Racing F1 team in the year ahead.

The word from Brackley for some days has been that Gary Paffett is the man most likely to be the new Honda F1 test driver. Paffett's experience with McLaren seems to have won him the day although our spies tell us that his management - Martin Brundle and Mark Blundell - have been pushing a little hard on the financial front.

The DTM Series is running short of star names at the moment with the departures of Jean Alesi and Heinz-Harald Frentzen. Olivier Panis is expected to turn up next year with Mercedes but there is still the need to get the racing into the mainstream media.

The FIA has appointed EU Competition lawyer Ken Daly as the new Secretary General of the FIA International Court of Appeal. He replaces David Ward, who now moves on to become a special advisor to FIA President Max Mosley, while retaining his role as the director general of the FIA Foundation.

Bernie Ecclestone is always wheeling and dealing to try to get the best result for his company - and challenging established ideas as he does so. Ecclestone's latest provocative idea, to be floated via an interview with the Bloomberg newsagency, is that Britain will share its Grand Prix with France.