Formula One News — March 2002

The game of negotiations surrounding the Kirch company continues with no-one outside the meetings really knowing what is going on and the media being used to exert pressure on the players.

Discussions over the possible implementation of a Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, an anti-smoking treaty being promoted by the World Health Organisation, have just finished in Geneva.

The issues raised by the Phoenix Finance Ltd. bid to take over some of the assets of Prost Grand Prix are interesting and raise the question of whether or not the FIA can be challenged for any decisions it makes.

Paying too much for sports rights has claimed another victim. British pay-TV ITV Digital went into administration on Wednesday after failing to make payments to the English Football League.

Motor Racing and the cinema have not always been easy bedfellows as Formula 1 found when it tried to do a deal a few years ago with Sylvester Stallone.

It has been expected for some time but Reynard has finally announced that it has been placed in receivership with immediate effect.

Lotus Engineering will take part in the soapbox derby at the Goodwood Festival of Speed this summer with the aim of producing a 50kg device which will be capable of running at 55mph down the famous Goodhill hill.

Jacky Ickx was interviewed recently by the Gulf News and said that he believes that the Middle Eastern nations which are currently fighting one another to host a Grand Prix in the region should club together and work together rather than battle to be the one and only F1 race in the Middle East.

The return of the car in which Ayrton Senna was killed at Imola, eight years ago, marks the end of the sorry tale of the legal action that followed the death of the great Brazilian driver.

The signs are that today will see a decision, one way or the other, on the future of the German media company Kirch, which controls the commercial rights to Formula 1 racing.

There are a million and one different awards handed out each year to successful Grand Prix drivers but few of them have the same emotional value as the annual "Lorenzo Bandini Award".

The most interesting question in recent days in racing circles is whether the Motor Sport Association in Britain will support an application to the FIA International Court of Appeal on behalf of Charles Nickerson's supposed F1 team (known as either Phoenix or DART GP).

Renault Sport's Ben Agathangelou, moved sideways by the recent appointment of John Iley as the team's new head of aerodynamics, has left the Enstone team and will start work on May 1 as the new head of aerodynamics at Jaguar Racing.

Young drivers may get excited about driving a Formula 1 car but two days going up and down the runways at the Elvington aerodrome in Yorkshire might have become a little bit dull for Japan's Ryo Fukuda, one of the test drivers of British American Racing.

Leading figures from different sports are to gather in London at the end of April to consider how sport is going to cope with the changing financial situation and technology.

Eddie Irvine was awarded damages of around $3000 this week resulting from his High Court victory over the Talksport radio station which had used his image to promote its programs - without his permission.

The latest twist in the convoluted tale of Kirch is that the troubled F1 commercial rights holder could be about to give up Kirch Media to Rupert Murdoch, Silvio Berlusconi and the investment bank Lehman Brothers.

Vodafone has jumped into Formula 1 sponsorship with much enthusiasm in recent months and has just concluded a deal to sponsor the Italian Grand Prix.

The Honda Formula 1 engineers, acutely aware that expectations are high, are racing to catch up in the battle for more horsepower.

The rumors that Peugeot may be looking at returning to F1 in 2004 with its own team have created a number of different theories about the route the team would be likely to take.

The German government is not likely to help the Kirch empire if it does run into terminal trouble in the next few weeks.

Ferrari knows that it needs its new F2002 and so one of the cars will be flown to Brazil for the Grand Prix next weekend.

A couple of weeks ago Eddie Irvine won a law suit in Britain over the illegal use of his image to promote the sales of a project he was not officially endorsing.

Poaching of key technical staff has been a major problem for all the major Formula 1 teams in recent years and there seems to be little they can do to stop this happening as rich middle-ranking teams seem to be willing to outspend the majors to get the right staff.