DECEMBER 22, 2002

Bucking the trend

There was a time when Mario Haberfeld was one of the rising stars in Europe, winning the British Formula 3 Championship with Paul Stewart Racing in 1998 but four years of Formula 3000 have produced no victories and no chances in F1 and so Haberfeld is going to America to join Eric Bachelart's Conquest Racing.

The team ran France's Laurent Redon and won the Indy Racing League Rookie of the Year prize last year. But not Bachelart is doing an odd thing: he is switching from IRL to CART!

The team has been beefed up considerably with the recruitment of Chris Mower, from the now-defunct Nordic Racing Formula 3000 team and Andy Miller, who used to have an important role at Jaguar Racing has moved from Team Astromega in Formula 3000 with Haberfeld..

The team is to use the Reynard chassis which were previously owned by Forsythe Racing, the argument being that now that CART has frozen its aerodynamic development the cars should remain competitive.