JULY 13, 1998

Berger heads BMW Motorsport

FORMER Grand Prix star Gerhard Berger has been appointed head of BMW Motorsport and will mastermind the Munich company's return to F1 with Williams in the year 2000. Berger has a long history with BMW in both touring cars and F1 and raced BMW-engined Grand Prix cars until he joined Ferrari in 1987.

Berger confirmed that the BMW-Williams deal is for five years and that a testing program will begin next season. The Austrian himself says that he is not going to be doing any driving as he admits that he lost the urge to race since he retired.

We hear from Munich that there are several different prototype engines running on the dynos but none of them are producing the necessary horsepower figures and a next generation of V10s will soon be produced capitalizing on what has been learned on the first units.

There is still a great deal of work to be done in terms of recruitment and research and development.

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