Formula One News — August 2008

European GP - Friday Press Conference

Brazil's Maurren Higa Maggi won the gold medal in the women's long jump at the Olympic Games in Beijing. She became the first ever Brazilian woman athlete to win an Olympic gold. Maggi is nicknamed "The Phoenix" because of her ability to come back from adversity.

European GP - Friday Team Quotes

European GP - Practice 2 Results

The Formula 1 cars took the streets in Valencia this morning with the drivers discovering the new circuit around the port. This produced a rather unexpected result with Sebastian Vettel fastest in his Toro Rosso-Ferrari and team-mate Sebastien Bourdais fourth fastest.

European GP - Practice 1 Results

European GP - Thursday Press Conference

For years engineers have complained that the rules of Formula 1 mean that there is little room left for innovation but Cambridge University's engineering department has just revealed that this is not the case at all.

Penske Racing is one of the most successful in US racing, but even the great suffer setbacks from time to time and early on Wednesday morning disaster struck Penske when the transporter carrying its race cars west to California, for this weekend's race at Sears Point, caught fire at four o'clock in the morning on a stretch of remote road in Wyoming.

Poker has enjoyed a boom in recent years with the televising of the game and its influence has managed to achieve something which Formula 1 has struggled to do for years - it has got the drivers socialising at races.

Chevron Corporation announced on Tuesday that it is dropping its Texaco NASCAR sponsorship at the end of the year, bringing to an end a relationship that has endured for 20 years.

Formula 1 teams have been visiting the city of Valencia for some time, to test at the Circuit de la Comunitat Valenciana Ricardo Tormo. This was not enough for the local government, which was looking for a sporting event to draw people to the city, following the successful America's Cup event in 2007.

Not long ago, motor racing was banned in Saudi Arabia, but as the sport spreads through the Middle East, things are changing. In 2007 the kingdom was included in the FIA calendar for the first time with a round of the FIA International Cup for Cross-Country Bajas.

Mecachrome International Inc, the Montreal-based engineering firm, has announced a second quarter loss of $18.7m. The news was announced at the same time as the firm said that chairman Gerard Casella would be taking over the roles of president and chief executive officer and would be restructuring the business to increase profitability.

The FIA announced recently that it was going to start a new Formula 2 championship and there was speculation that this would be based on the Formula Master championship, which runs with the FIA World Touring Car Championship. This made a lot of sense.

Superleague Formula has not been taken very seriously thus far, with no-one really understanding where the funding will come from for teams to run in the colours of the various soccer clubs that have announced their involvement.

Former Renault F1 Director of Aerodynamics Dino Toso died Wednesday morning after a long battle with cancer at the age of 39. Toso stepped down from his position at Renault this June.

The Formula 1 life is a tough one and the annual summer break - in which F1 is at the moment - gives most of those on the race teams the chance to get one week of vacation with their families in the summer holiday period.

Belgian Jules Bianchi has had a reputation for being rather wild in his two seasons of car racing to date, but on Sunday he outshone his ART Formula 3 team-mates to win the Masters event at Zolder. The much talked about Nico Hulkenberg ended up second ahead of a third ART car of Jon Lancaster.

Tottenham Hotspur has become the first English Premiership football club to join the Superleague Formula series, which is due to start later this month at the Donington Park. Tottenham will be the 15th club to decide to run a car in the new series.

Talk of F1 races in Mexico is intermittent and in recent years has never seemed to be very serious. There is, nonetheless, a long history of F1 in the country and good reasons for F1 to want to be there, to help expand interest in the sport in the US timezone and attract the attention of the vast Mexican population.

Scott Speed won his fourth ARCA race of the season on Saturday night in Nashville. The former Scuderia Toro Rosso driver now leads the championship in his Red Bull-sponsored Eddie Sharp Racing Toyota.

Mr Justice Eady's ruling in the Max Mosley sex case has established a new privacy law in the UK, based on precedent and it seems that this could, as feared by the media, be used to stop reporting of people's private lives.

What is interesting about Felipe Massa's engine failure in Hungary is that it is a sign that engine development is not dormant as it is supposed to be with the FIA-imposed engine freeze.

The main issue in Formula 1 at the moment, beyond the obvious political fight between Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone, and the need for a new Concorde Agreement, is the introduction of the Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS).