Formula One News — August 2002

Speculation has been flying throughout the day since the announcement that Heinz-Harald Frentzen had left Arrows. The suggestion that appears to be emerging is that Felipe Massa is to be dropped at Sauber to make way for Heinz-Harald Frentzen.

There are lots of stories flying about at the moment suggesting that Toyota is close to signing a deal for Cristiano da Matta to come to Formula 1 next year. The big question is who is making the decisions at Toyota.

Heinz-Harald Frentzen has left the Orange Arrows with immediate effect and while this will be a blow to the already struggling team, it is probably a sign that Frentzen has something else to do.

Morgan Grenfell Private Equity has been making up for its losses in Formula 1 activities by selling the Coral Eurobet company.

HRH Prince Al Waleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud (to give him his proper name) is one of the richest men in the world and has proved in the course of the last 15 years to be one of the mosty astute investors playing with big stakes.

Brendan McGuinness has confirmed that he is part of a consortium led by Saudi Prince Al-Waleed are in talks to buy Minardi. In Formula 1 circles this is no surprise as McGuinness has been knocking around the F1 scene for some time, although his efforts have yet to produce any solid results.

OrangeArrows and Heinz-Harald Frentzen have agreed to go their separate ways. Frentzen informed the team that he no longer wanted to drive for them and, presumably because there was no choice involved, the team agreed to let Frentzen go.

Jonathan Cochet, the former French Formula 3 Champion and one-time Prost Grand Prix test driver, has been trying to find a way to progress into Formula 1 since the demise of Prost

The now-annual Minardi Thunder in the Park event at Donington Park on August 10-11 will once again give F1 fans the chance to take a look behind the scenes of F1 with the team promising spectators the chance to get close to the drivers and the cars.

A year ago it was the dot.coms, then came the telecoms and then the accounting scandals and now it is the turn of financial institutions to come under the scrutiny of the stock markets. In the last few weeks insurance and banking companies have been hammered

Tommy Suharto, the man who tried to put Indonesia on the Formula 1 map, is not going to be bidding for any more Grand Prix dates - as he has just started a 15-year prison sentence for ordering the murder of an Indonesian Supreme Court judge

The Formula 1 circus is on holiday this week but the many websites connected with the sport have felt the need to keep producing news not seemingly worried as to whether or not there is any logic to any of it.

Former Jaguar Racing team boss Bobby Rahal is rumoured to be looking at the possibilities of running cars in the Le Mans 24 Hours.

The seemingly endless stream of young Brazilians racing in Europe could begin to dry up as the country faces economic problems, following the collapse of the banking systems in Argentina and Uruguay and uncertainty over the future because of the forthcoming election in October.

On Sunday we revealed that Bryan Herta would be joining Minardi at the Thunder in the Park event at Donington in the middle of August.

We suggested last week that the plans for a Grand Prix in Turkey might be affected by political issues and that appears to have happened with the Turkish parliament voting for new elections to be held in November.