DECEMBER 14, 1998

Brawn and Byrne re-sign for Ferrari

FERRARI has hit back at comments by Damon Hill that its technical team is "stale" by announcing that technical director RossÊBrawn and chief designer Rory Byrne are to continue at Maranello until the end of the 2001 season. This is no great surprise as both men joined the team at the start of 1997 on what are believed to be five year contracts. In recent years Ferrari has offered five-year deals to all its top engineers, notably John Barnard, Gustav Brunner and Wilem Toet.

The news that the two men have been re-signed must, therefore, be regarded as a publicity exercise - although it is quite possible that options were recently taken up by Ferrari as the contracts have been running for almost exactly two years.