Formula One News — January 2008

There has been a lot of talk in recent days about an Indian bid to buy Super Aguri F1, with the name of Andaleeb Sehgal, the boss of A1 Team India, being mentioned. There has also been much talk about the bid being backed by the steel baron Lakshmi Mittal, who is now a shareholder in Queens Park Rangers soccer team alongside Bernie Ecclestone, Flavio Briatore and Alejandro Agag.

Renault chairman Carlos Ghosn turned up at the ING Renault F1 launch in Paris and said that he hoped that the team would do better in 2008 than it did last year. Quoting team principal Flavio Briatore, Ghosn said that the 2007 season had been "a disaster" but added that the team still finished third in the Constructors' Championship, an assessment based on the fact that McLaren was excluded rather than on track performance.

Former F1 driver Justin Wilson has become the favourite to win the 2008 Champ Car World Series by signing a contract to race for Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing, the team that has taken Sebastien Bourdais to titles for the last four seasons. Wilson (29) will team up with 19-year-old Graham Rahal, who will go into his second season with the team.

Gil de Ferran has long enjoyed strong links with Honda, serving for a time as the sporting director of the Honda F1 programme. Now he is to run his own operation in the United States, preparing a fourth Acura sports car for the American Le Mans Series.

Honda Racing F1 has announced that it will have Mike Conway and Luca Filippi as its young drivers this year. The two will also be racing in GP2.

Honda Racing F1 has launched the new RA108 at its team headquarters in Brackley. The car is significantly different to the unsuccessful RA107 and also features an evolution of last year's livery, promoting the concept of "Earth Dreams" rather than "My earth dream".

Enrique Bernoldi has not been around the Formula 1 scene since he was Honda test driver back in 2005. Since then he has been since very little on the international scene with a test in Champ Car in 2006 and then racing in the Brazilian stock car series in 2007.

Australia's triple Formula 1 World Champion, Sir Jack Brabham, has been named an officer of the Order of Australia in the annual Australia Day honours list. The 81-year-old recognises his achievements as an ambassador for the sport, for his promotion of young drivers and for his support of various charity organisations.

Chip Ganassi's GrandAm team became the first team to win three consecutive victories at the Daytona 24 hour race.

The Speedcar and GP2 Asia series kicked off at the weekend in Dubai.

Max Mosley says that he will decide whether to stand again as a candidate for President of the FIA in October this year, a year before the election is due to take place. Mosley says that he is not yet sure if he will be a candidate - he is allowed one more term of office under the current rules - and that his decision will be based above all on whether he feels he wants to continue.

It has been confirmed after weeks of rumours that qualifying will be altered in 2008 in order to make it more entretaining and to get rid of the troublesome "fuel burn" period, which was seen by all concerned as a serious "own goal" in the process of giving Formula 1 a more environmentally-friendly image.

The government of Chile is supporting a big to take the Dakar Rally to South America in 2009. This year's event was cancelled because of a terrorist threat in Mauretania in Africa, and there are reports that Chile's deputy sports minister Jaime Pizarro has been in Paris with a letter from Michelle Bachelet, who has been president of the country since 2006, asking the Amaury Sports Organization to consider running the event in Chile.

The Williams and Renault teams have debuted their new cars in Valencia in Spain. The Renault was launched without any ceremony as there will be an official launch in Paris while Williams says it is not planning big events and simply wants to get on with the testing. The FW30 is a development of the same concept that the team has been following in recent times.

Renault sponsor ING is to be the title sponsor of the Hungarian GP. The company will have extensive track side advertising in addition to the title sponsorship deal. It will be ING's third race sponsorship deal. The race was run without a title sponsor last year after Hungary finally ended its relationship with Marlboro at the end of 2006.

Jacques Villeneuve Sr, the brother of F1 star Gilles Villeneuve, the uncle of World Champion Jacques Villeneuve and an F1 driver in his own right, albeit unsuccessfully, has been seriously injured in a snowmobile accident during a race in Wisconsin.

The Renault F1 team has announced a partnership with the Gauteng Provincial Government in order to promote the area as a sporting region. Gauteng is South Africa's smallest province but has a population of around 9.5m as it includes the cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria. this makes it the most populated province in the country.

The talk of budget caps for the Formula 1 world has led to an obvious question: if everyone is cutting back on spending, why are the drivers still being paid as much money as they are?

There has been much talk in recent months of the possible sale of several of the F1 teams but despite all the talk there is no real sign of any action. The talk of Super Aguri F1 being bought by Alejandro Agag seems to be considerably wide of the mark and Dietrich Mateschitz is once again saying that there is no intention at the moment to sell Scuderia Toro Rosso, although he tell Kleine Zeitung that in F1 one can "never say never".

Valencia in Spain was foggy this morning and so the new Williams-Toyota FW30 which began testing this morning was able to do very little running.

There are reports in the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun that Toyota is going to take a hybrid racing car to Le Mans. The newspaper quoted an unnamed Toyota official as saying that the company's plan is to use the classic French event to spread the word about its hybrid products and will also use the programme to boost its image as an environmentally-friendly company.

There are constant rumours at the moment that there will be management changes at McLaren before the start of the 2008 season and whether these are deliberately-planted stories or whether there is anything to them remains to be seen.

As we suggested last week, Vodafone McLaren Mercedes has confirmed that Lewis Hamilton will stay with the team for at least five years. The announcement was made by McLaren Group chairman and chief executive Ron Dennis.

The Speedcar Series will kick off in a few days in Dubai and the organisers have lined up an interesting field for the inaugural season. There will be 14 cars taking part in the first race with the entry headed by former F1 star Jean Alesi.

Red Bull Racing has announced that it has appointed Sebastien Buemi as the team™s test and reserve driver for 2008. The 19-year-old Swiss driver will also be racing in GP2 with Christian Horner's Arden International team. Buemi raced in the Formula 3 Eurocup last year, finishing runner-up to Roman Grosjean.