Formula One News — July 2008

Hungarian GP - Thursday Press Conference

It is no great surprise but Heikki Kovalainen has agreed to stay on at McLaren as Lewis Hamilton's team-mate in 2009. The Finn has done a decent job this year and will get stronger as he gets to know the team better.

The British Racing Drivers Club has been granted planning permission to go ahead with its rebuilding at the northern end of the circuit. The only problem is that in order to get the agreement the circuit has had to drop the plans to build housing in Silverstone village.

Getting Ferrari to join an association of Formula 1 teams was obviously not an easy thing to achieve and so it is not really a surprise to hear that the president of the new Formula One Teams Association (FOTA), will be Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo.

Michael Schumacher was involved in a road accident in England on Sunday, after attending the Silverstone Classic event. He was on his way to Lydd Airport in Kent at the wheel of a Fiat van (odd, but true) when he rounded a corner in Lydd-on-Sea and collided with a garage door, while overtaking another car.

What goes around comes around. Back in the early 1970s the Formula 1 teams established an association to represent their interests in discussions with the governing body of the sport. That association became the Formula One Constructors Association.

The Formula 1 teams had a meeting today in Maranello, Italy, and have agreed to set up a new association called the Formula 1 Teams Association, that will negotiate with the FIA and Formula One Management to agree on a new Concorde Agreement.

We reported some months ago that we believed that Fernando Alonso had signed a deal to race for Ferrari in 2010. This has been consistently denied by all concerned, but the rumours do not go away and the latest is that the Spaniard is looking at buying a house in the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland, which would be close enough to get to and from Maranello without too much drama.

The Formula 1 world is going through a quiet patch at the moment but today in Maranello the team principals will meet to discuss their response to the FIA's demand for proposals for new regulations.

Max Mosley has today issued proceedings against the News of the World for libel. Following his privacy claim, Mosley is now pursuing a claim for damages and aggravated damages in relation to defamatory allegations in the April 6 edition of the News of the World.

Victor Muller, once the boss of the Spyker F1 team, has been fined $150,000 for insider trading when he was in charge of the team. The case relates to a bank loan that Muller had negotiated, using Spyker shares as the collateral.

Max Mosley has won his privacy action against the News of the World newspaper for printing pictures and publishing videos of a five-hour sadomasochistic sex sessions with prostitutes in a cellar in Chelsea.

McLaren team manager Dave Ryan has been with the team since 1974 and has played a big role in turning McLaren into what it is today.

Michelin is to become the exclusive tyre supplier to A1GP, beginning this autumn. The deal is for three years. The tyres have been tested on the new Ferrari-built cars and have clocked up 2500 miles of running in the hands of Andrea Bertolini, Patrick Friesacher and Marc Gene. The design of the tyres stem from technologies developed in F1.

Timo Glock suffered a rear suspension failure at Hockenheim on Sunday and crashed heavily into the pitwall. The rearward impact had little in the way of deflection and so the driver took a lot of the force of the shunt.

Thank you Timo Glock. It is true that the substantial impact that you had with the pit wall may have been a little painful and, despite the rather eccentric method by which you were extracted from your wrecked car, you did everyone a favour. Before the impact the German Grand Prix had been a rather dull affair. The crash lit the race up.

German GP - Race Notes

German GP - Sunday Photos

German GP - Sunday Press Conference

German GP - Sunday Team Quotes

German GP - Race Incidents

German GP - Race Results

Lewis Hamilton snatched pole position at the end of the qualifying session for the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim. The McLaren star edged out Felipe Massa by two-tenths of a second in the final seconds of the session, while his team-mate Heikki Kovalainen bounced up to third.

German GP - Saturday Photos

German GP - Saturday Press Conference