Formula One Features — July 2000

The Champion spark plug company is one of the most successful in Formula 1 history, having supplied spark plugs to around half of the cars to have won events since the start of the World Championship in 1950. The familiar bow-tie Champion logo has been seen in the sport since the earliest days of competition but there are no records from the pre-war era as to which cars used which spark plugs although it is quite likely that Champion supplied Bugatti in the 1920s.

The principal sponsor of the Arrows Formula 1 team is mobile telephone company Orange which is now owned by France Telecom. It was started in 1994 by the Hong Kong real estate development company Hutchison Whampoa, which is controlled by Li Ka-Shing, who was named by Forbes magazine last year as the 10th richest man in the world with a fortune estimated at $12.6bn.

Prost Grand Prix sponsor Yahoo! is one of the top Internet companies in the world. It has been in operation since 1994 when Jerry Yang, a Taiwanese who had been raised in San Jose, California and David Filo, a fellow graduate of Stanford University, began to compile the Yahoo! Internet navigational guide.

The only time a Formula1 fan can be sure that all the drivers are driving at the limits of their skill and the capabilities of their cars is during the hour of Qualifying for each Grand Prix.

Racings cars have, and probably always will break. It is part of the very nature of motor racing, particularly at the level of Formula1, that designers push designs and materials to their limits, and occasionally over them.

The German car care products company Hoffman Sonax KG was established in 1983 as an independent company, being spun off from its original parent company Hoffmann & Sohne KG of which it had previously been a division. This company can trace its roots back to 1905 when it was established in the town of Neuburg (Donau), just up the road from the town of Ingolstadt, later to become famous as the home of the Audi car company.