NOVEMBER 24, 2004

Wilson moves to RuSport

Formula 1 refugee Justin Wilson has switched from Conquest Racing to join billionaire Carl Russo's RuSport team for 2005. Justin will partner the man who beat him to rookie of the year honours this year AJ Allmendinger. The team has previously won Michel Jourdain Jr with backing from the Gigante supermarket chain but the Mexican firm looks like dropping the sponsorship although Russo says that this had nothing to do with the decision.

"I had a great first year in Champ Cars," Wilson said. "Now I am looking for an environment that will give me the opportunity to win, and that's what I see in RuSport, a very professional, very serious team."

Wilson did not give details of the length of the contract but they talked of a long-term relationship which would seem to suggest that Wilson's hopes of returning to F1 are being forgotten for the moment.

RuSports is a new team, established in 2003 to run AJ Allmendinger in the Toyota Atlantic series, which moved into Champ Cars last year. Russo founded the Cerent Corporation in 1997 after cutting his teeth in the optical networking industry with AT&T Paradyne, the Hyperchannel Networking Group and Xircom. Two years later he sold the business to Cisco Systems for $7.4bn in Cisco stock, a deal which personally made him something in the region of $400m.