Formula One Features

One minute he is the archetypal British sportsman: the square-jawed, relatively clean-living gentleman, Mr. Nice Guy. The hard trier who never quite gets it together, never quite gets close enough to win the cigar, let alone to light it. But the next, he'll suddenly drag out the sort of performance that won him last year's Belgian Grand Prix at Spa Francorchamps, one of the most demanding venues in the calendar and the one said to sort the Haves from the Have Nots. In the 1999 race at the daunting circuit in the Hautes Fagnes region, Coulthard beat his much-vaunted team-mate Mika Hakkinen so fair and square that the normally placid Finn got himself into a fair old snit about it.

With the US Grand Prix at Indianapolis a little over a month away, there is a huge sense of anticipation surrounding the return of the F1 world championship to the country it last vacated a decade ago after two unremarkable races through the streets of Phoenix, Arizona.

Alberto Bombassei established the Brembo company in the town of Paladina, near Bergamo in northern Italy, in 1961.

The prime factors that differentiate the performance of one make of Formula 1 car from another in the current era of a single tire supplier are the engine and the aerodynamics. After the engine, it is the aerodynamics that commands the bulk of the R&D budget, with the team's wind tunnel being a major capital expenditure.

I'm really curious to know what Bernie Ecclestone and Max Mosley honestly think about Colin Sullivan's new Premier 1 Grand Prix operation. To start with, this novel marketing concept to merge top-line European soccer promotions with a new motor racing category has been developing for the past 18 months behind the scenes.

General Electric may only be a small sponsor on the rear wing of the Ferrari but it is a vast conglomerate which builds everything from aircraft engines to light bulbs, nuclear power plants to railway locomotives not to mention advanced plastics and medical equipment. It owns a huge financial services company and the NBC television network. The Fairfield, Connecticut-based company supplies Ferrari with technological information from its research into advanced plastics and ceramics.

The Champion spark plug company is one of the most successful in Formula 1 history, having supplied spark plugs to around half of the cars to have won events since the start of the World Championship in 1950. The familiar bow-tie Champion logo has been seen in the sport since the earliest days of competition but there are no records from the pre-war era as to which cars used which spark plugs although it is quite likely that Champion supplied Bugatti in the 1920s.

The principal sponsor of the Arrows Formula 1 team is mobile telephone company Orange which is now owned by France Telecom. It was started in 1994 by the Hong Kong real estate development company Hutchison Whampoa, which is controlled by Li Ka-Shing, who was named by Forbes magazine last year as the 10th richest man in the world with a fortune estimated at $12.6bn.

Prost Grand Prix sponsor Yahoo! is one of the top Internet companies in the world. It has been in operation since 1994 when Jerry Yang, a Taiwanese who had been raised in San Jose, California and David Filo, a fellow graduate of Stanford University, began to compile the Yahoo! Internet navigational guide.

The only time a Formula1 fan can be sure that all the drivers are driving at the limits of their skill and the capabilities of their cars is during the hour of Qualifying for each Grand Prix.

The German car care products company Hoffman Sonax KG was established in 1983 as an independent company, being spun off from its original parent company Hoffmann & Sohne KG of which it had previously been a division. This company can trace its roots back to 1905 when it was established in the town of Neuburg (Donau), just up the road from the town of Ingolstadt, later to become famous as the home of the Audi car company.

Racings cars have, and probably always will break. It is part of the very nature of motor racing, particularly at the level of Formula1, that designers push designs and materials to their limits, and occasionally over them.

Nortel Networks is a vast telecommunications equipment maker, based in Canada. The company can trace its roots right back to 1880 when Alexander Graham Bell established the Bell Telephone Company of Canada in Montreal.

The Korean Air company was established by the South Korean government to be the country's national airline. It was state-owned until 1969 when it was sold by the government at the time to the vast Hanjin shipping and transport empire.

In 1955 clothing salesman Luciano Benetton teamed up with younger sister Giuliana to go into business. Giuliana was knitting sweaters for her friends and legend has it that they sold Luciano's accordion and a bicycle belonging to their younger brother Carlo. With the money raised they bought a knitting machine. Giuliana made the sweaters and Luciano sold them.

Philip Morris opened a tobacco shop in London in 1847 and seven years later he began to manufacture his own cigarettes.

In recent years the growth of Formula 1 teams has been dramatic.

Nothing spoils a day at the races more than the car one is associated with breaking down. Whether one is the driver, a member of the team or the engine supplier, a component supplier (particularly if it is their component that has failed), a sponsor or a supporter, the disappointment experienced when the car falters and ceases to participate in the race, is deep.

The Cramer Family has been making beer in the town of Warstein, in the hills to the east of Dortmund, in the north of Germany, for as long as there have been records. The first recorded brewer was Konrad Cramer in 1753 and in 1803 his brother Johannes built the first actual brewery in the town. A steam-powered factory replaced the original in 1895 but this and its successors could not cope with demand and so in 1978 a huge new factory was built outside the town. It has been extended twice since then and now employs 12,000 people.

Charles Wang is the son of a Chinese immigrant and grew up in New York City. After leaving university he began to sell Swiss software in the United States and within five years had built Computer Associates into a big enough company for it to be floated on the New York Stock Exchange. Using the money raised, Wang began buying up his competition and in the course of the next 15 years he spent $4bn to build Computer Associates into the world's third largest software company behind Microsoft and Oracle.

Head-up displays (HUDs) are now proven and fully accepted technology for use in military and commercial aircraft, but have not yet found a permanent place in either road or racing cars, although Cadillac have offer one, based on Hughes technology, for some years.

During 1998, the Ferrari F300 appeared with one of the most visibly striking changes to a Formula1 car for some time. Instead of the twin exhaust pipes emerging under the car, carefully placed relative to the diffuser to gain the most benefit for the aerodynamics, they exited through the top of the bodywork alongside the engine.

Just three races into the 2000 Formula1 World Championship, and it is already clear that it is a two horse race.

Following Mika Hakkinen's accident in Adelaide in 1995, in which he fractured his skull, the FIA initiated a research programme in cooperation with Daimler-Chrysler Research, into driver protection in frontal impacts. The results of that programme will be seen in CART, DTM2000 and other series this year, and in Formula1 next.