DECEMBER 1, 2000

Verstappen and Raikkonen on official entry list

THE FIA has issued its official entry list for the 2001 Formula 1 World Championship and while most of the names are as expected it is interesting to note that Arrows has nominated Jos Verstappen and Pedro de la Rosa and Sauber has nominated Kimi Raikkonen.

THE FIA has issued its official entry list for the 2001 Formula 1 World Championship and while most of the names are as expected it is interesting to note that Arrows has nominated Jos Verstappen and Pedro de la Rosa and Sauber has nominated Kimi Raikkonen. The official enty list can be changed up until 6pm on the Thursday before the Australian Grand Prix next year. There are few surprises with the numbering system which is formulated from the results of this year's Constructors' Championship. Thus Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello became numbers 1 and 2, Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard 3 and 4 and so on.

More interesting are the nominations for the engines. Benetton has failed to name its engine for the coming season. Benetton has been using what they call Playlife V10s although these are in fact only renamed Supertecs. Renault is building completely new engines for Benetton and is clearly hedging its bets. It may decide not to be associated with the engines if testing shows them to be unreliable but if they prove to be competitive we would expect the French car maker to take advantage of the situation. Neither Minardi nor Prost have named their engines. Minardi has yet to confirm its deal to use Supertec V10s while Prost has see if the Ferrrari V10 engines can be sold to a sponsor. The only other point of note is that Arrows had announced that it will run Asiatech V10s. These are revamped Peugeots which have been prepared by the new owners of the Peugeot F1 program, Asia Motor Technologies.

The full list was distributed as follows: