JANUARY 23, 2007

Jani to Champ Cars

As we reported in September, Neel Jani is to go to America to race a Red Bull car for PKV Racing in the Champ Car World Series season. The 23-year-old Swiss driver spent last year as test driver for Scuderia Toro Rosso while also racing in A1 GP and a handful of GP2 races. He has been a Red Bull driver since 2005 but with all the available F1 seats take, Jani had little choice but to move. The job was offered to Christian Klien but he decided that he would prefer to stay in F1 and left Red Bull.

The announcement once more brings into question the Red Bull policy towards young drivers as they have been queuing up to get into F1 and yet the Austrian firm has hired David Coulthard and Mark Webber rather than using its own drivers. This has caused much frustration for the likes of Tonio Liuzzi and Scott Speed although both are expected to remain at Toro Rosso this year, despite the lack of any official announcement.