Formula One News — January 2007

As we reported in <a href="http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns17448.html">September</a>, Neel Jani is to go to America to race a Red Bull car for PKV Racing in the Champ Car World Series season.

There are whispers in the architectural world that McLaren may be on the verge of moving into the construction and design business with the suggestion being that Bahrain's Mumtalakat Holding Company - McLaren's new partner - might buy Lord Foster's share of his Foster and Partners company and rebrand it with the McLaren name.

McLaren may send its cars to Spain to do aerodynamic tests because of the recent decision to reduce the number of days that teams can use Elvington in Yorkshire. The Sant Luis aerodrome was the first civil airfield on island of Menorca and with a runway 1.1 miles in length would suit the team well.

Baron Emmanuel de Graffenried has died at the age of 92. He was a leading F1 driver in the early years of the World Championship and won the first British Grand Prix in 1948.

The FIA's policy of drug testing has resulted in a two-year licence suspension for 33-year-old Italian GT racer Luca Moro, who tested positive in a routine doping test carried out at the 2006 Spa 24 Hours after benzoylecgonine (a metabolite of cocaine) was discovered in a urine sample.

Prodrive has signed Tony Schulp to be its new group commercial director. Schulp is currently the chief executive of the Haymarket Worldwide company. As part of this, Schulp will be responsible for the commercial activities for Prodrive's new Formula 1 programme.

The word on the street in Austria is that Red Bull Racing will be sponsored this season by the engineering firm Oerlikon. The team says that it will have a major new technical partner and the indications are that this could be Oerlikon.

Williams has asked us to point that although there was no sign of sponsors Allianz and Reuters on the car which was recently photographed with Lenovo branding, the two companies will be continuing with the team in 2007.

Ryan Briscoe, the former Toyota F1 test driver, has signed to race this year for Porsche in the American Le Man Series. Briscoe will join LMP2 champion Sascha Maassen in one of the Penske Motorsports Porsche RS Spyders, while the second will be raced by Timo Bernhard and Romain Dumas.

Formula 1's top driver have long been taking advantage of Switzerland's generous taxation system, which allows them to get away with paying taxes based on the value of their property rather than their income.

Greece's plans to host a Grand Prix took a big leap forward on Saturday when Greek President Karolos Papoulias signed a decree which will allow investors to seek funding from the Greek development ministry.

Photographs of a Williams decked out with Lenovo livery have created a great deal of speculation that the Grove team may have signed a major sponsorship with the Chinese computer computer - which is the third biggest computer manufacturer in the world, following its 2005 acquisition of IBM's PC Division.

As we exclusive revealed recently there is to be a full-length feature film made about the life of New Zealand racing driver Bruce McLaren.

The Bruce McLaren movie which we reported about recently is taking place today at Taupo in New Zealand, to coincide with the A1 Grand Prix race meeting.

The FIA Institute has been pumping out news this week as it meets for the first FIA Institute Safety Summit, at Paul Ricard.

There is much speculation at the moment as to who will drive for Scuderia Toro Rosso in 2007. There has been much rumouring about Robert Doornbos, who despite all the talk seems to be bound for the United States. There is also talk of Tiago Monteiro.

The employment company Randstad has expanded its involvement in Formula 1 with a three-year sponsorship deal with the AT&T Williams team.

The inaugural FIA Institute Safety Summit at Paul Ricard has been focussing on risk management in sport.

Super Aguri driver Sakon Yamamoto will race for Spain's BCN Competicion in the GP2 Series this year.

The A1GP Series is in action in Taupo, New Zealand, this weekend with the teams all chasing Germany, which currently leads the points thanks to the efforts of Nico Hulkenberg, who has won two feature events thus far.

The annual Trophee Andros ice races are providing some of the old F1 stars with something to do this winter and both Alain Prost and Olivier Panis have been enjoying success as team mates with Toyota France.

Abu Dhabi may be announcing a Formula 1 Grand Prix in 2009 a little earlier than people think. We understand that plans are being laid for an event on February 1 at which an announcement could be made.

The Spyker F1 team is busy at the moment collecting up as much sponsorship as possible and has just announced a deal with the software company Exact.

Eagle-eyed observers will have noticed that the new Renault testing in Jerez is running with sponsorship from Renault, Elf, Hanjin and PVAXX, a Dubai pallet-making company.

The emergence of Abu Dhabi as a candidate for a World Championship event should be taken very seriously, despite the fact that Bahrain currently enjoys the exclusive right to host a Formula 1 race in the Middle East and North Africa. What is not clear is how long that deal lasts.