Formula One News — April 2005

The Australian Grand Prix Corporation is in the news in Melbourne this week following the conviction of one of its top executives for drink-driving.

The nine Formula 1 teams which have yet to agree to a new Concorde Agreement from 2008 will meet in London tomorrow to hear from their various working committees about the developing plans for a new World Championship.

The GP2 series held its qualifying sessions for the alloaction of its numbering at Paul Ricard today and the result was that America's Scott Speed won iSport International the top two numbers with a best lap of 1m19.414s.

Formula 1 reject Giorgio Pantano set the fastest time of GP2 testing on Tuesday at Paul Ricard, at the wheel of a car run by Super Nova Racing.

Bernard Dudot is not retiring, despite the fact that 66-year-old French engineer has now left the employment of Renault F1.

Honda has named Yasuhiro Wada as the replacement for Shoichi Tanaka as president of Honda Racing Development Ltd, the British-based company which oversees the Japanese company's F1 activities.

Lucky Strike BAR Honda has confirmed that Gil de Ferran is to join the team in the newly created role of Sporting Director, responsible for the BAR Honda team at events.

It has been announced in Monaco that Prince Rainier has died. he had been on the throne of Monaco for 56 years and an important figure in the development of the Monaco Grand Prix as one of the world's leading events.

Gil de Ferran, former CART champion and Indianapolis 500 winner, is expected to be named Sporting Director of BAR-Honda this week.

A big Formula 1 test got under way at Barcelona today with Ferrari and Renault in action at the track. World Championship leader Fernando Alonso was in action and, according to witnesses suffered a rear wing failure at one point.

The HVM Champ Car team has announced that it will be running former Formula 3000 champion Bjorn Wirdheim and Denmark's Ronnie Bremer. The funding from the team is somewhat obscure at the moment but we hear on the grapevine that much of the money will becoming from Champ Car partner Kevin Kalkhoven.

Vitantonio Liuzzi will make his Formula 1 race debut with the Red Bull Racing team at the San Marino Grand Prix on April 24.

Fernando Alonso won the Bahrain Grand Prix. No, he didn't. Fernando Alonso waltzed to victory, his second in as many weeks and Renault's third win on the trot. But it was more than that. Alonso saw off Michael Schumacher with a carefree wave of his magic wand.

Ferrari arrived in Bahrain with two F2005s. The spare car was an F2004M. On Friday morning Rubens Barrichello's gearbox suffered what Ross Brawn described as a "catastrophic" problem.

Former Formula 1 test driver Ryan Briscoe made a decent impact in the Indy Racing League race at St Petersburg in Florida. The Australia was leading the race with nine laps to go.

No, not that Michael Schumacher. He had a miserable time but over in the United States Michael Andretti had the kind of weekend that team owners can only dream of having.

Bahrain GP - Sunday Press Conference

Bahrain GP - Race Notes

Bahrain GP - Sunday Photos

McLaren played host to a party from the planned Team Dubai F1 team at the weekend in Sakhir according to our sources within the team.

Danilo Dirani scored a pair of impressive wins for Lola and P1 Motorsport at the opening round of the British Formula 3 series at Donington Park. Dirani won from pole in the first event while his nearest challenger Marko Asmer made a bad start and dropped into the midfield.

Bahrain GP - Race incidents

Bahrain GP - Sunday Team Quotes

Bahrain GP - Race Results