Formula One News — February 2002

Our spies at Leafield are revealing more details of the purposeful-looking Arrows A23, which does as we speculated feature a Sauber-like front suspension.

Sauber, Jordan and Minardi joined testing in Valencia on Tuesday, and Nick Heidfeld posted the fastest lap of the day in the new Sauber-Petronas C21.

Honda may be struggling to be competitive in Formula 1 at the moment but the company is making a lo of money, recording a profit of over $1.1bn in the last three months of 2001.

The Laguna Seca racing circuit has started work on $15m upgrading program which will result in the circuit finally getting permanent garages with VIP hospitality suites above them and a brand new media center and race control building.

The liquidation of Prost Grand Prix will free up a number of team personnel to work with other Formula 1 teams. The team's managing-director Joan Villadelprat will be one man who should soon be snapped up.

While there was much attention being paid to the departure of Steve Nichols, Pedro De la Rosa continued to test the new Jaguar R3 in Barcelona, with somewhat encouraging results.

There has been a change of management at Toyota Motorsport with Toshiro Kurusu replacing Ichiro Kowada as the Executive Vice President of Toyota Motorsport GmbH.

Williams and Renault began testing at the Valencia circuit on Monday in artificially wet conditions.

The new Arrows A23 was run for the first time at the Kemble airfield in Gloucestershire.

Gunther Steiner has been appointed technical director of Jaguar Racing to replace the departed Steve Nichols.

Jaguar's announcement that Steve Nichols has been dropped by the team was phrased in typically public relations waffle.

Steve Nichols, the technical director of Jaguar Racing, has been dropped by the troubled racing team and while the news is not exactly a big surprise given the performance of the Jaguar-Cosworth R3 in recent tests, it is not going to make life any easier for the team as it tries to sort out the problems.

Eddie Jordan has flown off to Tokyo today for what are believed to be talks with the management of Honda.

Yesterday we hinted that there was about to be a reshuffle amongst some of the top engineers in F1 and rumors have already begun that Egbahl Hamidy is about to depart Jordan Grand Prix and may be replaced by Renault F1's Pat Symonds.

BAR boss David Richards has recently had an hour-long cup of coffee with none other than Eddie Irvine, lead driver of Jaguar Racing.

The British government says that it "does not anticipate that" the entire Silverstone by-pass will be finished in time for the British Grand Prix in July.

The Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne is due to take place a month from now but the date remains provisional at the moment because of the legal implications that might exist in the report and recommendations of the Melbourne coroner.

February is traditionally the time of year when a number of F1 technical directors have contracts which run out.

It is one year since Niki Lauda took over as head of the newly-created Premier Performance Division of the Ford Motor Company, his role being to run Jaguar Racing, Cosworth Racing and Pi Electronics.

Jaguar had the Circuit de Catalunya to themselves Saturday, but only managed 47 laps between two drivers and cars.

Enrique Bernoldi is scheduled to test the first new Arrows-Cosworth A23s on Monday in England before the car is sent to Spain for more intensive tests.

With less than a month to go now before the start of the Formula 1 World Championship in Australia, the race in Melbourne remains provisional on the F1 calendar pending the delivery of the Coroner's Report into the death of track marshal Graeme Beveridge during last year's race.

Mika Hakkinen, taking a year's "sabbatical" from Grand Prix racing is waiting for the Australian Grand Prix to see how he feels when he is not at a Grand Prix track for the first time in years.

As we predicted a week ago, Australian rising star Ryan Briscoe will be racing a Ferrari sportscar at Albert Park in order to learn the race track in preparation for his F1 debut which is expected to take place in 2003.