Formula One News — October 1997

THE FIA World Motor Sport Council announced a variety of decisions after last week's meetings in Paris.

MAX MOSLEY was re-elected President of the International Automobile Federation last week in Paris.

GIANCARLO MINARDI has secured a supply of customer Ford V10 engines for next season.

AS expected Jackie Stewart has reconfirmed that his drivers in 1998 will be Rubens Barrichello and Jan Magnussen.

BENETTON's controversial head of electronics Tad Czapski is to follow Ross Brawn to Ferrari.

THE disintegration of the team of engineers at Renault Sport, following the defection of Bernard Dudot to Prost Grand Prix is expected to begin shortly and we hear that Dudot's head of research and development, the highly-rated Frenchman Jean-Jacques His, is to join the Ford F1 operation, working with Cosworth engineers at Northampton.

JACQUES VILLENEUVE may have blown his chances of winning the Formula 1 World Championship.

WHILE the BAT Reynard team is planning a multi-faceted assault on motor racing, some of the current Grand Prix teams are already looking seriously at expanding into Formula 3000, running in-house teams in the same livery as the F1 parent operation.

THE most surprising aspect of the Japanese Grand Prix weekend was Yamaha's failure to announce that it will be continuing in Grand Prix racing next year with Tom Walkinshaw's Arrows team.

FIA President Max Mosley has suggested that the FIA may decide to cancel the entire concept of the Concorde Agreement if the rebel F1 teams do not fall into line.

MICHAEL SCHUMACHER reckons that he has only a 30% chance of winning the World Championship this year - but he is not about to give up.

AS we have been predicting for nearly a year Bernard Dudot is to leave his job as technical director of Renault Sport and take up a similar position with Prost Grand Prix at the end of October.

AS predicted, Jacques Villeneuve and Heinz-Harald Frentzen will be staying with Williams in 1998 and the continuity of drivers should help the team as it tackles the new narrow track regulations next season.

MALAYSIA's financial problems have continued in recent days with the ringgit once again diving against the dollar as currency speculators frantically sell their ringgit.

CHRYSLER chief executive Robert Eaton announced this weekend in Germany that the company is intending to double its sales in Europe in the next five years.

THE West McLaren Mercedes team did not do any major testing last week, giving Ilmor and Mercedes-Benz engineers the chance to try to pin down the problem which has been causing the team's V10 engines to blow up at recent races.

EMERSON FITTIPALDI has officially retired from motor racing at the age of 50.

FRANK WILLIAMS, Patrick Head, Adrian Newey and David Coulthard last week missed their appearances in court at Imola - because there were no hotel rooms available in the entire Bologna region because of a huge ceramics trade fair taking place.

THERE is an FIA Congress this week in Paris with meetings of World Councils - Motor Sport and Touring and the annual General Assembly.

BERNIE ECCLESTONE's plans to float Formula One Holdings, the company which exploits the commercial rights to Grand Prix racing on behalf of the FIA, is going to go ahead, probably early next year.