Formula One News — April 2007

More details are now emerging about the bid for a Formula 1 street race in Delhi and a man who is at the centre of the plan is Suhel Seth, an advertising man who these days have interests in image-making and has also been involved in the television industry.

The F1 teams will be in action this week in Barcelona, preparing for the forthcoming Spanish GP. With testing now heavily restricted the teams are tending to all take part in the same tests, although one or two of them having been using up available test days doing aerodynamic mapping tests.

Bernie Ecclestone turned up at Brands Hatch over the weekend to take a look at the A1 Grand Prix Series, sparking speculation that the F1 enterpreneur may be considering getting involved with the struggling championship.

It has been a relatively quiet weekend for racing around the world although the Indy Racing League and NASCAR teams were in action in the United States. At the Kansas Speedway Dan Wheldon led 177 of 200 laps to win the Kansas Lottery Indy 300.

Formula 1 has long been a refuge for the suddenly rich and famous, and the latest suggestions coming out of Germany is that Austrian hotelier Gunther Aloys may be on the verge of signing a sponsorship deal with the Spyker team, to promote his Rich Prosecco drink.

Juan Pablo Montoya has hit the headlines once again thanks to "an inappropriate gesture" made during practice for the recent NASCAR Busch Series race at Phoenix. NASCAR has fined him $10,000 and placed him on probation until the end of the year for giving one of his opponents the finger while he was unaware that he was being shown live on an in-car camera.

McLaren's visit to the holiday island of Menorca is proving to be popular with the troops and we hear that several of the team are now considering returning to the islands with their families, which will certainly please the locals who came up with the idea of allowing F1 cars to test on the 1.1-mile long airfield at San Luis.

Mercedes-Benz High Performance Engines (HPE), formerly known as Ilmor Engineering, the firm that designs, develops and manufactures Mercedes F1 engines is planning to build a new testing facility at its headquarters in Brixworth.

Flavio Briatore has long been the man who has concentrated on the need for Formula 1 to provide entertainment, rather than remaining a sport in the truest sense of the word.

Tsutomu Tomita, the chairman of Toyota Motorsport and team principal of Toyota F1, is to leave the team at the end of June. Tomita was the driving force behind Toyota's decision to enter Formula 1 in 2002 and has been with the team since 2003. He became team principal in January 2004.

The local press thought that our stories about McLaren testing in Menorca were an April Fool, despite the fact that we first mentioned the test in January. On Tuesday the ferry delivered three liveried McLaren tracks which headed for the Sant Luis aerodrome, where they were joined by around 40 mechanics who had flown into Mahon for the occasion.

Sebastien Bourdais is winning again in America. After three rounds of the Champ Car series Sebastien is leading the championship by three points, having won at both Long Beach and in Houston.

Work has now started on the construction of the racing circuit that will circle the Romanian Parliament building. The race, which should take place on the weekend of May 18-20 was to have included the GP Masters but it is interesting to note that there is no sign of the series on the official website and there are no sessions listed in the official timetable.

In Holland the talk has already started that Christijan Albers could be replaced at Spyker by Germany's Markus Winkelhock. The rumours have been denied by all concerned but there is no doubt that Albers is not very happy with the current Spyker car and although Adrian Suttil has had three accidents in three races he seems to have settled in well with the team, leaving Albers looking rather weaker than one might have supposed.

Major new developments will be launched in Bahrain in around two months with plans for the unveiling of the long-awaited business park alongside the Bahrain International Circuit.

The desire to have a Grand Prix in Delhi is likely to rise following the news that the city has given up on its bid to host the Olympic Games in 2016. This followed its failure to land the 2014 Asian Games after a vote last week in which Korea's Incheon beat Delhi in an Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) vote.

General Motors has been the world's largest car company since it overtook Ford back in 1931 but this year the reign of Detroit has come to an end with Toyota reporting a nine percent increase in the first three months of the year to record sales of 2.35m compared to GM's 2.26m.

Formula 1's viewing figures this year are looking good, despite the fact that two of the three races this year have been at times which are not good for Europe, F1's major market. There was also a relatively poor showing in Bahrain because of the good weather in Europe which saw many viewers choosing to go out for the day rather than watching television.

It is not easy being at the back of the Formula 1 grid and many a team has failed to survive and been sold on as a result of the problem. The major reason for this is that being outside the top 10 in the Constructors' World Championship means that a team does not get any of the commercial benefits that are on offer from the Formula One group.

The FIA is to increase the load-testing on the Formula 1 floors, increasing the current 500 Newton test to an impressive 2000 Newtons.

The long-running case against former Ferrari engineers Mauro Iacconi and Angelo Santini, who were accused of stealing Ferrari secrets and giving them to Toyota, has concluded at the Tribunale di Modena with Santini condemned to nine months in prison for industrial espionage and Iacconi facing 16 months in jail for receiving the information from Santini and passing it on to Toyota.

Max Mosley was the man who instigated the idea of customer cars in Formula 1 and it is therefore not really a surprise that he is still in support of the idea. The argument that there is not enough money to support 12 constructors has certain merits but there is clearly sufficient cash for 10 and has been for many years.

MotoGP seems unlikely to return to Istanbul. The local Zaman newspaper is reporting that the Turkish Motorcycling Federation will be applying to the International Motorcycling Federation (FIM) to annul its contract for the MotoGP event because it cannot afford to fund the races any longer.

The stories suggesting that Formula 1 has settled on the idea of a street race in Delhi have been underscored by the news that F1 track architect Hermann Tilke was in Delhi on Monday to take a look at the streets of the city to figure out what would be best route for Formula 1 cars to use.

The FIA and the F1 community have joined calls for a United Nations conference on road safety. Every year around 1.2m people die on the roads, 40% of the victims being under the age of 25.