Formula One News — December 2000

THE Benetton team is not running Fernando Alonso in testing at Barcelona this week because it is a charity organization.

THE recently-announced deal for Bavarian media baron Leo Kirch to buy a 25% share of EM.TV and to take over 49% of the Formula One group of companies is not yet definite.

JORDAN have agreed a three-year partnership deal with World of Internet.com AG (WoI) and expect to seal the deal today (Friday).

FERRARI president Luca di Montezemolo has declared that he wants two more world titles from Michael Schumacher before the German retires.

HE Dallas investment company Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst specializes in buying up small struggling companies in an industry, repackaging them and then selling them on.

BRIDGESTONE has been forced to cut its profit estimate by 80% this year because of the effects of the problems with the Firestone brand in the United States of America.

BMW MOTORSPORT director Gerhard Berger and BMW-Williams driver Ralf Schumacher have expressed fears that the team's new Michelin tires could stall their season in 2001.

THE German state prosecution service has announced that it is investigating the activities of EM.TV, the half owner of the Formula One group of companies, which ran into serious trouble recently on the Neuer Markt stock exchange in Frankfurt.

GIANCARLO FISICHELLA will undergo an operation on a knee injury next week, his Benetton-Renault team confirmed on Thursday.

DAVID COULTHARD topped the times for the second consecutive day in Bridgestone tire testing at the Valencia circuit on Thursday.

IT may sound very dramatic that Giancarlo Fisichella needs to have knee surgery but with the increasing use of arthroscopy this has ceased to be the problem it once was for sportsmen.

JENSON BUTTON set the fastest lap time for his new Benetton team on Thursday in testing at the Circuit de Catalunya, Barcelona.

THE mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown, who has hopes of hosting a Grand Prix in the city, is going to struggle to make a race a reality.

FERARRI test-driver Luca Badoer continued the Italian team's hectic testing schedule at their Fiorano circuit on Thursday.

RALF SCHUMACHER has been forced to abandon his BMW-Williams testing plans in Barcelona this week after being hit by flu.

THE future of the Hungarian Formula One Grand Prix is in doubt after the country's parliament banned cigarette advertising.

FURTHER to our story about Minardi doing a deal to use Supertec engines in 2001, the latest rumor in F1 circles is that the precision engineering company Mecachrome, which builds the current Supertec V10 engines, could be on the verge of buying the struggling Italian team.

THREE-TIME world champion Michael Schumacher is predicting that there will be little change in the way of team dominance for next season.

BENETTON's new technical director Mike Gascoyne believes Jenson Button is quickly finding his feet at the Chipping Norton-based team.

MCLAREN dominated testing at Valencia on Wednesday as David Coulthard and Alexander Wurz topped the times - leaving Ferrari's Rubens Barrichello trailing in their wake.

RALF SCHUMACHER produced a scintillating display in testing at Barcelona on Wednesday as he blasted his brother Michael's pole position time for this year's Spanish Grand Prix by over half-a-second.

MICHAEL SCHUMACHER's manager Willy Weber has won a court case which protects his earnings from the marketing of the three-time world champion.

FORMULA ONE new-boy Juan Pablo Montoya continued to impress in testing at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona -- even though he admitted all he wants to do is learn his Williams chassis.

SOUTH AFRICA is to spend over $50m on a massive advertising campaign to attract more tourists to the country.