Formula One News — January 2007

Our own F1 reporter Joe Saward spends most of his time travelling to the Grands Prix and ferreting out the stories for the website, but for the last 18 years in his spare time he has long been working on a most extraordinary book

The word on the street is that Abu Dhabi is going to build a Formula 1 standard race track as part of the Ferrari theme park development that is under construction at the moment.

The Champ Car World Series will return to Europe in 2007, for the first time in four years. The US series has announced plans for races in Holland and Belgium in early September.

The German computer company Medion AG is to be a sponsor of the Spyker F1 organisation. The firm, which specialises in selling high quality, price efficient consumer electronic products, is keen to expand its sales of PCs, multimedia and personal media items.

McLaren has long been an innovator in Formula 1, not just with the racing cars but also with all the paraphenalia that comes with a Grand Prix. It was the McLaren team that built the first mega-motorhome, a two-storey construction known as "The Communications Centre".

Williams F1 sponsor Federal Express has moved on to join McLaren. The US firm has been in F1 since 1997 but has spent the last two years with Williams.

The German TV market is Formula 1's most lucrative and we hear that there is a fair old battle going on over who will have the rights in 2008 and beyond.

Details of the planned street circuit in Singapore are now beginning to leak out with the route proposed by Hermann Tilke. It will run through the parkland of the Civic District and around the Suntec City area, where there are a number of big hotels.

The new BMW Sauber F1.07 has been unveiled in Valencia this morning with the Hinwil-based team keen to score regular podium finishes in F1 this year.

Vodafone McLaren Mercedes race drivers Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton will drive through the streets of Valencia in their Formula 1 cars later today to mark the start of an exciting new era for the team.

Aguri Suzuki, Christian Danner and Martin Brundle were at various times in their careers team mates and rivals in Formula 1 but the trio will be all on the same side today at Silverstone as they take it in turns to test drive a Super Aguri SA06.

Scuderia Ferrari (significantly no longer Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro) kicked off the new season with the launch of its new car, codenamed the 658 within Ferrari, but racing as the F2007.

The Formula One group of companies has secured a massive $2.9bn of funding from the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lehman Brothers in order to pay off a loan which was taken out by CVC in order to buy the Formula One group.

The Panasonic Toyota Racing team has launched its new TF107 and hopes that this will be the car to give it is first victory in Formula 1. The car will be driven by Jarno Trulli and Ralf Schumacher.

Toyota has landed a sponsorship deal with Kingfisher Airlines, the low-cost domestic airline launched in 2005 by Vijay Mallya. Mallya has long been an avid racing fan who has been involved in the running of Indian motorsport in recent years.

Mike Gascoyne is a man who likes to get things done and when he turns up at a new team things start to happen and the team moves forward. It happened when Gascoyne was at Jordan, Renault and Toyota.

Arden International named its GP2 drivers for 2007 with Adrian Zaugg alongside Bruno Senna.

Stefano Domenicali and Mario Almondo, the new sporting and technical directors of Ferrari, were introduced to the Italian media at the annual event at Madonna di Campiglio and theytook the opportunity to explain their new roles.

Amid unsurprising talk that Malaysia may not host a Grand Prix, comes news that the plan for a race in Singapore has been slowed down by the appearance of a second bidder for the event.

Britain's Minister for Sport Richard Caborn says that the British government will do everything it can to ensure that Silverstone develops as an international centre of excellence for performance car production and says that keeping the British Grand Prix is a "very important" part of the process.

This year is the 60th anniversary of Enzo Ferrari's entry into the production car business with the Ferrari 125 Sport. This was not actually the first road car that Ferrari had built, as his Auto Avio Costruzioni company built an 815 in 1940, but it was the first car to bear the Ferrari name.

Panasonic Toyota Racing will present a Toyota TF105 show car to the FIA Institute at the inaugural FIA Institute Safety Summit at the Paul Ricard circuit on January 18, 2007.

Red Bull Racing is to launch the new RB3 at Barcelona on January 26

The Bahrain government has bought a 30% shareholding the McLaren Group, using its recently established new holding company called Bahrain Mumtalakat Holding. The company is chaired by Sheikh Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, the Bahraini Finance Minister and a member of the Bahrain royal family.

Back in 2003 the town of Portimao, on Portugal's Algarve coast, announced that it was going to build a Formula 1 spec racing facility in order to revive the Portuguese Grand Prix.