Formula One News — January 2008

The new Red Bull-Renault RB4 has been doing its first laps down in Jerez and the team hopes that the new car - a development of the RB3 - will bring the team better results in part thanks to better reliability and in part as a result of development work.

We hear that the F1 teams have all been granted one free engine failure per car this year after the recent meeting in Paris. This will mean that they will not to have to suffer a drop of 10 places on the grid.

There is testing this week in Jerez and while this provides plenty of headlines for those with daily deadlines it is a little early to reach any startling conclusions about the season ahead, as half the teams are still running with their old cars and others are just beginning the process of settling in with the new machinery.

The Renault company is ticking along at the moment. It has been very successful in Formula 1 in recent years, although last year was very disappointing. The company has a strong and successful alliance with Nissan, which constrasts markedly with what happened with DaimlerChrysler.

Prodrive boss David Richards says that starting a new Formula 1 these days is "virtually impossible". Richards blames "the new Concorde Agreement" which he says means that each team has to be a constructor.

Most of the Formula 1 teams are quite happy with the idea of capping their budgets. This makes considerable sense in the current economic climate with the car companies worrying about the cost of potential fines from the European Union if they do not make their cars more environmentally friendly by 2012.

The launch of the new BMW Sauber F1.08 gave F1 obsservers the first chance to see the extent of the team's new deal with Deutsche Telekom's T-Systems and given the space that has been to the telecommunications company on the car it is tens of millions of dollars to the team and is clearly more than just a technical partnership as had been suggested.

The new BMW Sauber F1.08 was unveiled to the media at BMW Welt in Munich this morning. The team says that the new car is completely an evolution of the successful F1.07. The team has been able to invest more in the development of the new car and has taken a few risks the result being what Technical Director Willy Rampf says is a "radical evolution".

Today marks the start of the Williams team's 30th year of Formula 1 racing and to mark the event the team will unveil the first of six different liveries that will be used this winter to celebrate a sequence of landmarks in the history of the team, which will also take part in its 500th Grand Prix this year.

Since the launch of the new McLaren last week there have been some rumours circulating that suggest that the team has signed a new long-term deal with Lewis Hamilton. It would be amazing if this were not the case but the interesting point is how long the deal is for - and how much money Hamilton will be paid.

The team principals meeting on Friday seems to have passed without undue drama and apparently no-one said anything when FIA President Max Mosley told the teams that Alan Donnelly, the FIA consultant who attends F1 races as his official representative, will be involved in the process this year.

New Zealand A1GP driver Jonny Reid says that he is close to a deal to become a Formula 1 driver.

The F1 teams met with FIA President Max Mosley in Paris yesterday to hear details of proposals put forward for cost-cutting in F1. Mosley had suggested a raft of dramatic restrictions including the concept of curbing windtunnel and CFD usage.

Force India has confirmed that it will be running Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil in 2008. The team will also be using Tonio Liuzzi to be the team's test and reserve driver, an appointment that will ensure that there is sufficient pressure on the two racers to keep them motivated.

Toyota has launched its new Formula 1 challenger, the TF108 in a presentation in Cologne. The car is the work of a team of design engineers led by France's Pascal Vasselon.

The Honda Racing F1 has announced that Alex Wurz has joined the team in the position of test and reserve Driver. The 33 year old Austrian is considered to be one of the best development drivers in Formula 1 and will share the track testing responsibilities with the team's race drivers Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello.

One of the great mysteries in Formula 1 at the moment is who is going to be doing what at Ferrari in 2008. The company has given details of its racing programmes with Stefano Domenicali named as the director of the racing department and various managers reporting to him have been nominated.

Jacarepagua, the former F1 circuit in Rio de Janeiro, is to be demolished to allow the city to build new venues for its 2016 bid for the Olympic Games. The circuit, built on reclaimed marshland back in the 1970s, hosted the Brazilian GP on 10 different occasions before F1 moved to Interlagos in the rival city of Sao Paulo.

Former F1 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve has been impressing the NASCAR boys in the last few days in testing for the 2008 Sprint Cup. Jacques put his Bill Davis Racing Toyota fifth quickest on the first day and then set the second fastest time on the morning of Day 2. He later slipped back to 21st in the afternoon session.

There are reports in Germany that Tonio Liuzzi will be named as the test and reserve driver for the Force India F1 team later this week. The team is expected to confirm that Giancarlo Fisichella and Adrian Sutil will be its race drivers in 2008 and with Liuzzi behind them the two are going to need to remain motivated.

Neel Jani, the 24-year-old Swiss driver who has been racing in Champ Car in 2007, is believed to be looking at opportunities to get back into Formula 1 in 2008. Jani raced for PKV Racing last year but it seems that the team is now looking elsewhere in 2008 and has signed Spain's Oriol Servia. This is an odd move given that Jani did a decent job in his rookie year.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has acquired a 14.58% stake in German Pay-TV broadcaster Premiere, making it the company's biggest single shareholder.

Vodafone McLaren Mercedes presented its MP4-23 this morning in Stuttgart and it was significant that the launch was attended by Dr Dieter Zetsche, the chairman of the Daimler Board and the boss of Mercedes-Benz - and by Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone, who was prominently featured in the launch.

Williams F1 has been quietly building up its sponsorship this winter with new longterm deals with many of its backers and rumours of a major new deal in the weeks ahead.

The Ford Motor Company has informed its Jaguar and Land Rover workers that it is in "focused negotiations" to sell the two brands to India's Tata Motors. Jaguar and Land Rover have been up for sale for six months but this is the first time that Ford has publicly revealed a possible buyer.