JANUARY 20, 2004

Renault denies direct involvement in GP2

The new GP2 Championship which was launched yesterday is apparently not being organised by Renault. The French car company issued a press release today saying that it would like to clarify the situation and that it is only involved in the championship as it is the supplier of the engines. Renault says that it is confident that GP2 will become the stepping stone for drivers to Formula 1.

This begs the question as to who is organising the championship as this is clearly not the FIA, which rebuked GP2 yesterday for not having sent the federation the rules and regulations of the series.

The only clue to this comes with the naming of Bruno Michel as the contact for the championship. Michel is an accountant who first became involved when Cyril de Rouvre took over Ligier in the early 1990s. After de Rouvre went to jail, Michel stayed on a Ligier and came into contact with Flavio Briatore, with whom he has remained close ever since. He ran the financing of the team when Briatore was in charge and then after the Prost takeover of the team moved to Supertec, a company which was owned by Briatore. Since the company stopped its F1 involvement Michel has been running Briatore's driver management business called FB Associates, which is based in the British Virgin Islands.