Formula One News — September 2007

Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa emerged ahead of the pack in the first session at Mount Fuji. The two Ferraris were two-tenths ahead of the McLaren of Fernando Alonso with Lewis Hamilton a tenth behind him.

Japanese GP - Practice 1 Results

Luca di Montezemolo, the chairman of Ferrari, has developed a bad habit in recent weeks of opening his mouth and saying controversial things. A few weeks ago Montezemolo told students in Rome that he had been a World Champion copier when he was taking exams and that they would do well to copy things from others. This came at the height of the Stepneygate revelations.

Japanese GP - Thursday Press Conference

Delta Special Projects, the Silverstone-based company which supplies the chassis for the Grand Prix Masters series is seeking a winding up order against the organisers for non-payment of invoices. The petition will be heard at the Royal Courts of Justice in London on November 28.

Indy Racing League champion Dario Franchitti looks like starting his stock car racing career with a race in a Chip Ganassi Dodge in the ARCA Re/Max Series race at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama on October 5.

Matt Bishop, the editor in chief of F1 Racing magazine, and the editorial director of Haymarket Motorsport Ltd has resigned his position and will be leaving the company in December.

Max Mosley has been complaining to members of the F1 media that the sport is wasting too much money. The FIA President is entirely right.

Police in Moscow are investigating what appears to have been a murder attempt against Sergei Zlobin, the first Russian to drive a modern Formula 1 car. Zlobin climbed aboard his Mercedes G500 SUV on Monday morning in the north of the city. The car exploded after it had moved only a couple of feet.

As the Formula 1 circus heads out to Japan there are many whispered stories doing the rounds about espionage scandals which may or may not come to light. With the FIA having punished McLaren so harshly, despite having almost no concrete evidence that the information was used, the federation may now find that it has opened a Pandora's Box of similar cases in the F1 world.

The announcement that McLaren has decided not to appeal against the World Council's astonishing $100m penalty comes at the end of a week of intense negotiation between then team, the FIA and various other parties, including other F1 teams.

Ferrari has put out the following press statement.

McLaren Racing has notified the FIA of its intention not to appeal the verdict of the World Motor Sport Council, as announced on September 13. Having now had time to study the judgement of the World Motor Sport Council with its lawyers and shareholders, McLaren thinks it is in the best interests of the sport, and its goal of winning races and world championships, not to appeal.

Spies in Italy are nor always reliable (as we have seen this summer with regard to the Stepneygate business) and we are hearing that rumours about Luca Filippi joining Ferrari may be a little more than premature, as the young Italian appears to have been in earnest discussion with other teams and thus is not thought to have agreed anything.

Markos Kyprianou, the European Union's health commissioner, has continued his attack on Ferrari's continued use of tobacco advertising and has asked China to ban tobacco promotions at next month's Chinese Grand Prix. Kyprianou has told China's Deputy Health Minister Chen Xiaohong that the EU is concerned about images of the cars being beamed back into Europe.

There is no doubt that part of the negotiation going on at Spa last weekend was to find a way for Fernando Alonso to get out of his McLaren contract. Our spies suggest that while everyone seems to think that Fernando will wash up at Renault, it is much more likely that he will be popping up as Kimi Raikkonen's team-mate at Ferrari.

The Etihad Aldar Spyker team has announced that GP2 driver Roldan Rodriguez will join its test and development driver line-up over the 2007/08 winter period. Twenty-two year old Roldan, from Valladolid, Spain, completed a 50km shakedown of the Spyker F8-VII at Silverstone last week.

Our spies in Italy and telling us that 22-year-old Luca Filippi has been signed up as a Ferrari test driver for 2008. It is expected that he will also compete in the GP2 Series with Nicolas Todt's ART Grand Prix team and be managed by Todt Jr.

Ian Mill is a Queen's Counsel, a lawyer appointed to be one of "Her Majesty's Counsel learned in the law". In order to receive such recognition and "take silk" one has to serve as a barrister for at least 10 years and one has to be eminent. Mill is a leading light in commercial litigation, intellectual property, media and entertainment and sports law.

The full transcripts of the FIA World Council meetings have now been published and these reveal some interesting things, not least the state of the relationship between McLaren boss Ron Dennis and the team's number one driver Fernando Alonso.

Here are the transcript of the World Council meetings on July 26 and September 13 w2ith all the details of the Stepneygate Affair.

Nigel Stepney is not joining either Aston Martin or Aston Martin Racing. The former Ferrari team coordinator has been reported to be working for Aston Martin by the Italian newspaper Gazetta dello Sport and has been picked up by other news sources, which have not checked the story.

The FIA has published a new Formula 1 calendar for 2008 with the Belgian and Italian Grands Prix having swapped places. The Belgian GP will now be on September 7 with the Italian race a week later on September 14, rather than vice-versa.

Negotiations behind the scenes are keeping the phone lines buzzing at the moment as McLaren, the FIA, Bernie Ecclestone, Ferrari and perhaps other teams try to find what Ron Dennis refers to as "closure" in the Stepneygate business.

The brand new Speedcar Series will feature an eight-date, 16 race calendar on tracks across Asia and the Middle East, kicking off at the Bahrain International Circuit on November 3. This will be followed by a race in Dubai on November 17. There will be an event each month during the winter and then the series will link up with F1 at Sepang on March 22, and Bahrain on April 5.