NOVEMBER 1, 2001

Formula 1 teams planning December launches

WITH the current ban on testing in Formula 1 and the fact that the rules for next year are unchanged teams are going to be ready with new cars earlier than ever so that the new machinery can undergo development and reliability work before the new season opens in Melbourne in March.

The bigger teams are confident that they can build reliable machinery from the start and so they will, as usual, maximize the development time and not bring out their cars until as late as possible but some of the other teams have decided to have their cars up and running early. Toyota has announced that it will be launching its first F1 challenger on December 17 in Cologne, Germany. British American Racing and Jordan are both expected to unveil their cars before Christmas. Several other teams, hoping for better performance, will have new cars and so these are unlikely to be ready until mid-to-late January.