Formula One News — January 2002

Testing continued at the Circuit de Catalunya on Friday, where McLaren test driver Alexander Wurz shattered the track record he set earlier in the week.

Franck Montagny was forced to miss his planned test last week with Minardi in Valencia because of an operation but the team still intends to give the young Frenchman a test in the not too distant future to see how he does.

It may have been wet, damp and cold at Silverstone today (Friday) for the launch of the new Williams-BMW FW24.

Satellite Television operator BSkyB announced Friday that it has worked a deal with Formula One Management to broadcast live interactive coverage of the Formula One World Championship in 2002 and 2003.

Formula 1 cars are to qualify earlier than normal for the European Grand Prix on June 22 - to avoid the session clashing with quarter-finals of the soccer World Cup.

Jenson Button has a new manager - but the word on the street is that he is not one of the establishment management names in F1 circles but rather a fairly low-key lawyer called John Byfield.

The first real cutback in the newly re-branded Ford Rallye Sport empire has come with the announcement that the works-supported Ford Focus program of multiple FIA Middle East Rally Champion Mohammed bin Sulayem is to be axed.

There is a delay in the decision but that means that Prost Grand Prix is still in business. The court in Versailles says that it has received several similar proposals for partnerships in Prost.

Roger Penske has decided that his team will use Dallara chassis for its assault on this year's Indy Racing League.

Testing continued at various European circuits on Thursday.

The International Formula 3000 scene has been pretty quiet for a while with most of the top teams yet to confirm their drivers (and in some cases their participation) in 2002.

Toyota sources in Germany are whispering that the Toyota Motorsport test driver Ryan Briscoe will be racing at Melbourne this year.

The lack of any word from the Melbourne Coroner is beginning to cause worries in Europe.

Oriol Servia may have long-term dreams of a career in Formula 1 alongside his fellow countrymen Pedro de la Rosa and Marc Gene but for the moment at least he is planning to stay in the United States of America.

The Fiat group, Italy's largest industrial company, is to sell off more than $2.6bn worth of non-core businesses as it tries to reduce its massive $5.2bn debt load.

Johnny Herbert has been signed by Audi to drive in the Sebring 12 Hours and the Le Mans 24 Hours this year.

The decision by the government of Argentina to cut the value of dollar deposits in the country's banks is bad news for any company that had been hedging its bets on the failure of the peso but keeping hold of US dollars as well.

These are hard times for everyone but the Italian motorcycle company Ducati is showing that if you have the right product you can still make money.

Back in August we reported that Turkey was planning to pitch the FIA in the hope of landing a Formula 1 Grand Prix at some point in the years ahead.

When Jaguar decided not to go down to Barcelona but instead concentrate on trying to sort out a front wing aerodynamic problem at Lurcy-Levis in France, the writing probably went up on the wall for the design team.

McLaren and Sauber were back at it again in Barcelona on Wednesday, where young guns Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa tested their teams' new machinery for the first time.

Eddie Irvine has taken legal action to gain some damages from a radio station which used his picture to promote its programming.

Reynard has announced 50 more redundancies to add to other jobs lost in the course of the last 12 months.

Eddie Jordan is always one for surprises but the team's decision to finish off the new car and go running with it without even announcing a launch date is both a good sign and a bad sign for the team.