BAR plays down crisis

BRITISH AMERICAN RACING has been playing down suggestions that a showdown is coming between team bosses CraigÊPollock and Adrian Reynard, saying that the board meeting which was due to take place last week (but was delayed) was simply a quarterly gathering and no major moves were planned. This is a shame as the team needs to sort out who is in control if it is to make any real progress in the future.

There is no reason to suspect that the team is not telling the truth about the meeting and so one must conclude that AdrianÊReynard's bid to take over the team has flopped. This is not a surprise given the recent stories about the economic problems afflicting Reynard Motorsport which would seem to suggest that Adrian Reynard is no position to do anything to take over the team. If this is indeed the case, Pollock needs not to worry as Reynard's only active involvement in the team comes to an end at the end of 2001 when his contract to run the technical side of the team runs out. After that Reynard Motorsport will be merely a minority shareholder in the team, which will have its own technical structure.

The team said that there will be no announcements about the meeting this week.