Formula One News — August 2007

Turkish GP - Friday Press Conference

Turkish GP - Friday Team Quotes

Turkish GP - Practice 2 Results

Turkish GP - Practice 1 Results

Jacques Villeneuve will test session a NASCAR truck next week as he looks for a new direction for his racing career. The former F1 world champion will try a Bill Davis Racing Toyota at the Chicagoland Speedway on Monday.

Turkish GP - Thursday Press Conference

The Etihad Aldar Spyker Formula One Team has been forced to postpone the launch of its new B spec car until the Italian Grand Prix due to unexpectedly failing the rear impact test. The team will now contest this weekend's Turkish Grand Prix with two A spec cars.

Scott Speed could be bound for NASCAR. Red Bull is keen to keep contact with the American despite his recent fallout with Scuderia Toro Rosso bosses Gerhard Berger and Franz Tost.

The BMW Sauber F1 team announced today that they will continue in 2008 with their current driver line-up of Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica.

A French newspaper has scooped the F1 world by revealing Fernando Alonso's future eomployer. The economic supplement to Le Figaro of August 17 reported changes at the top of the flight test team at Airbus, which is currently launching its new double-decker A380.

BusinessF1 Magazine Ltd, the company which publishes the BusinessF1 magazine, has had a number of expensive legal actions to contend with in recent years and it seems that the burden may have been too much.

There are reports that the Prodrive is close to making an announcement about its Formula 1 plans after months when there was little sign of activity. There is little doubt that Prodrive has a deal in place with McLaren if money can be found. This will be for cars and engines.

Jean Redele has died at the age of 85. The Frenchman was a key figure in the history of Renault's competition activities and played an important role in bringing the company back to motorsport in the 1950s.

For some time it has been clear that the Spyker company needed to be fundamentally changed. The F1 team has been supporting the car company in recent months, which makes no sense at all.

McLaren partner Mansour Ojjeh is a very wealthy man. This gives him access to all manner of "toys", not least a 235ft yacht called Kogo, which he keeps in the Mediterranean.

The news that Sebastien Bourdais has been signed by Scuderia Toro Rosso means that Tonio Liuzzi is out of work with Red Bull next season: four of the Red Bull drives have now been assigned elsewhere in 2008, only one of them going to a member of the Red Bull Young Driver scheme.

The word from the United States is that Sebastien Bourdais's drive at Newman Haas Lanigan Racing will go to Britain's Justin Wilson. The 29-year-old Sheffield driver, who won the International Formula 3000 title in 2001 broke into F1 in 2003 with Minardi and was then hired in the midseason by Jaguar Racing.

After months of speculation Scuderia Toro Rosso announced today that three-time Champ Car champion Sebastion Bourdais will drive for the team in 2008.

Lewis Hamilton says that he did not use "the F word" to Ron Dennis in Hungary and would like the world to know that he is still a thoroughly wholesome fellow and that things are now calming down with Fernando Alonso as well.

Scuderia Toro Rosso has been working to try to conclude a deal that will allow it to announce on Wednesday that multiple Champ Car champion Sebastien Bourdais has reached agreement to join the team in 2008 and will therefore team up with Sebastian Vettel.

The International Court of Appeal will take place on September 13, just three days before the Belgian Grand Prix.

The Times newspaper in London is reporting that "well-placed sources" say that Ron Dennis has informed Fernando Alonso that he can leave the team at the end of the year if he wants to do that. This does not seem very likely.

The city of Shanghai was hit last week by storms which resulted in winds of up to 80mph. These resulted in serious damage to a number of the grandstands around the circuit, with hand rails being blown off and in some cases, the stands actually collapsing. The circuit said that there may not be time to do the necessary repairs before this year's race because dismantling the seats, clearing the debris and rebuilding will all take time.

A year ago British fans rejoiced when Jenson Button won the Hungarian GP in his Honda. It seemed as though Button was finally on his way to F1 success. Twelve months later Jenson's moment of glory is all but forgotten.

Honda Racing F1 was hoping to be able to settle down now that a new design team has been put together but our sources in Brackley have confirmed that a number of key engineers are in the process of leaving the team to move to Red Bull Racing where Honda's former technical director Geoff Willis is now putting together the people he wants around him.