Formula One News — January 2002

Satellite Television operator BSkyB announced Friday that it has worked a deal with Formula One Management to broadcast live interactive coverage of the Formula One World Championship in 2002 and 2003.

The first real cutback in the newly re-branded Ford Rallye Sport empire has come with the announcement that the works-supported Ford Focus program of multiple FIA Middle East Rally Champion Mohammed bin Sulayem is to be axed.

Sauber and Williams will be unveiling their new challengers today at Dubendorf Air Force Base in Switzerland and at Silverstone respectively.

Testing continued at the Circuit de Catalunya on Friday, where McLaren test driver Alexander Wurz shattered the track record he set earlier in the week.

Jenson Button has a new manager - but the word on the street is that he is not one of the establishment management names in F1 circles but rather a fairly low-key lawyer called John Byfield.

Formula 1 cars are to qualify earlier than normal for the European Grand Prix on June 22 - to avoid the session clashing with quarter-finals of the soccer World Cup.

Franck Montagny was forced to miss his planned test last week with Minardi in Valencia because of an operation but the team still intends to give the young Frenchman a test in the not too distant future to see how he does.

There is a delay in the decision but that means that Prost Grand Prix is still in business. The court in Versailles says that it has received several similar proposals for partnerships in Prost.

Testing continued at various European circuits on Thursday.

Oriol Servia may have long-term dreams of a career in Formula 1 alongside his fellow countrymen Pedro de la Rosa and Marc Gene but for the moment at least he is planning to stay in the United States of America.

Roger Penske has decided that his team will use Dallara chassis for its assault on this year's Indy Racing League.

Toyota sources in Germany are whispering that the Toyota Motorsport test driver Ryan Briscoe will be racing at Melbourne this year.

The lack of any word from the Melbourne Coroner is beginning to cause worries in Europe.

The International Formula 3000 scene has been pretty quiet for a while with most of the top teams yet to confirm their drivers (and in some cases their participation) in 2002.

Back in August we reported that Turkey was planning to pitch the FIA in the hope of landing a Formula 1 Grand Prix at some point in the years ahead.

The decision by the government of Argentina to cut the value of dollar deposits in the country's banks is bad news for any company that had been hedging its bets on the failure of the peso but keeping hold of US dollars as well.

Johnny Herbert has been signed by Audi to drive in the Sebring 12 Hours and the Le Mans 24 Hours this year.

Reynard has announced 50 more redundancies to add to other jobs lost in the course of the last 12 months.

McLaren and Sauber were back at it again in Barcelona on Wednesday, where young guns Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa tested their teams' new machinery for the first time.

When Jaguar decided not to go down to Barcelona but instead concentrate on trying to sort out a front wing aerodynamic problem at Lurcy-Levis in France, the writing probably went up on the wall for the design team.

Eddie Irvine has taken legal action to gain some damages from a radio station which used his picture to promote its programming.

These are hard times for everyone but the Italian motorcycle company Ducati is showing that if you have the right product you can still make money.

The Fiat group, Italy's largest industrial company, is to sell off more than $2.6bn worth of non-core businesses as it tries to reduce its massive $5.2bn debt load.

The future of the Prost Grand Prix team may not be clear at the moment but if the worst comes to the worst there is a good chance that a number of them will be able to find work just around the corner at Citroen Sport.