Formula One News — November 2007

Indianapolis Motor Speedway President Joie Chitwood has told Bloomberg that he is confident that Formula 1 will return to the speedway in the future, despite the fact that the United States Grand Prix has been dropped from the calendar for 2008.

Formula 1 documentation is usually rather dull, often consisting of little more than lists. There are new rules, lists of dates, lists of entries, lists of justifications for decisions and so on and so forth.

Although Prodrive has admitted that it will not be racing in F1 in 2008 the company's ambitions remain much the same with David Richards saying that F1 is "the right place for Prodrive to be" and arguing that the team would be there but for the change of mind in F1 circles about customer cars.

There have been many rumours today about Fernando Alonso meeting up with Honda and supposedly having a seat fitting. These are not true but that does not mean that the Spaniard has not been talking to Honda. The big question is whether Honda is talking back.

For those who think that a little scandal is a good idea, it might be worth pointing out that the world of cycling is currently paying a high price for the doping scandals that have beset the sport in recent years. In the last few days Deutsche Telekom has ended its sponsorship of the Neuer Strassen Sport team.

The Force India F1 team is to run no fewer than seven drivers at the forthcoming Jerez testing with Giancarlo Fisichella, Franck Montagny and Ralf Schumacher joining Christian Klien and Tonio Liuzzi. The team will also run Roldan Rodriguez and Giedo van der Garde.

Derek Daly, a regular Formula 1 driver in the early 1980s, has worked in recent years as a TV pundit and racing school owner, based in Las Vegas, Nevada. He decided last year to launch a new business called Derek Daly Design, to design race tracks for customers across the United States, in partnership with Paxton Waters Architecture.

The Motor Sport Business Forum is to host a Middle Eastern version of the event in Bahrain between April 1-2, the days leading up to the Bahrain GP. This will be the first year of a five-year deal. The conference will provide exhibition facilities in addition to the conference.

Formula One Administration Ltd has signed a multi-year deal for Kitbag Ltd to operate the Formula One merchandising operation at Formula1.com. The company will launch a new Formula One Store in the spring of 2008, hoping that Kitbag's e-commerce experience will enable it to sell more of the official products of the sport.

Eurosport is to produce live coverage of the 2007 Motor Sport Business Forum in Monaco on December 5-6. The event will be screened with a live webcast for the first time.

At this time of year Formula 1 folk are much in demand at any number of award ceremonies across Europe. The FIA is the only organisation that has the right to demand that drivers attend but the Autosport Awards in London is often seen as the biggest event and best-attended.

Bernard Laporte, formerly the head coach of the French national rugby team, has been France's Secretary of State for Sports for about a month now and one of the dossiers he is concentrating on is the future of the French Grand Prix. He has told the French sports newspaper L'Equipe that the race is "like the Tour de France and Roland Garros" and "belongs to the French people".

There was a time when the names Jac Nasser and Wolfgang Reitzle were heard regularly in Formula 1 circles. Nasser was the boss of the Ford Motor Company between the start of 1999 and the end of 2001 and it was during his reign that Ford bought Stewart Grand Prix and transformed it into Jaguar Racing.

Jock Clear, a senior race engineer with Honda Racing F1 has been awarded an honorary doctorate by Scotland's Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh from which he graduated with a BEng in Mechanical Engineering in 1987.

A1 Team Switzerland won both rounds of the A1GP series in Kuala Lumpur over the weekend with Neel Jani in complete command of the event. In the Sprint race Jani finished nearly four seconds ahead of A1 Team France's Loic Duval, who was well clear of Germany's Michael Ammermuller and Robert Wickens of Canada.

Philipp Eng of Team Mucke Motorsport has won a test drive with BMW Sauber with victory in the annual Formula BMW World Final in Valencia. The 17-year-old Austrian, who finished third in this year's German Formula BMW series, led from start to finish, beating Marco Wittmann and Jens Klingmann.

Renault's troubles in Formula 1 may be weighing heavily on the company at the moment while it waits for the FIA World Council meeting in December, but the company still has to look ahead, even if there is a threat that the F1 team could be thrown out of the World Championship by the FIA.

Max Mosley was in Serbia today to discuss the construction of an international racing circuit in the country. Serbia remains under some international suspicion at the moment because some observers believe that Ratko Mladic and his fellow war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic enjoy the protection of elements with the country's government and security services.

Super Aguri F1 is on the verge of announcing job cuts at Leafield because the team cannot afford to keep at its current strength and needs to pull back to make sure that the team has the money to go racing in 2008.

The 2007 Motor Sport Business Forum has expanded again this year with more delegates, more exhibitors and more media interest than ever before. Since the inaugural event in 2005, the forum has more than doubled in size in every area, w

It is just a guess but there is a suspicion that if the FIA went nosing around the rubbish dumps and lay-bys of Motorsport Valley at the moment - and other suitable spots around Europe - its computer experts might find a lot of interesting stuff.

Things have gone pretty quiet of late about the Renault espionage allegations with only Renault F1 boss Flavio Briatore banging on about how the team has not really done much wrong and that his engineers took only cursory glances at the various systems and that the information was just a few old floppy discs.

BMW has been busy running some unusual drivers in its F1 machinery, to say thank you and to reward them for their success.

The Spanish media is hungry for news about Fernando Alonso's future and is busy running stories on an almost daily basis about the various permutations possible, the sponsors who would be involved and so on. The instant copying services provided by a number of Internet sites means that there is always something that seems to need to be reported.

Formula 1 has long been plagued by those with vested interests but increasingly these are the people who needed to keep the sport growing. Out in India, people are currently asking how an Indian Grand Prix makes financial sense for those involved.