NEWS ARCHIVE
...LEAVING HARVEY IN CHARGE
THE resignation of Ken and Bob Tyrrell from the Tyrrell Racing Organization leaves Dr. Harvey Postlethwaite in charge of the entire team - of which he was a 10% shareholder.
BELGIUM IS IN
THE Belgian Grand Prix has been saved thanks to some neat political side-stepping by the government of Walloonia, the region of Belgium in which the Spa-Francorchamps racing circuit is situated.
MCLAREN DOMINATES BUT WILLIAMS IS READY
MCLAREN continues to dominate testing in Barcelona with Mika Hakkinen last week setting the fastest lap time of the winter with a best lap of 1m21.45s in the course of last week's testing at the Spanish circuit.
SCOTLAND'S ANSWER TO FERRARI
TOM WALKINSHAW finally unveiled his plans for 1998 at a launch of the Arrows A19 at the TWR headquarters in Leafield, Oxfordshire.
THE TYRRELLS QUIT TYRRELL
KEN and Bob Tyrrell have resigned from the Tyrrell Racing Organization with immediate effect, following disputes with British American Racing over how the team should be run.
YAMAHA IS OUT!
THE announcement that Arrows is to use its own engines brings to a close the disastrous history of Yamaha in Formula 1.
COLLARD SIGNS FOR ARROWS
FRENCHMAN Emmanuel Collard - who has never raced in a Grand Prix but has completed many thousands of miles of testing with a string of different F1 teams - has found a new job for 1998.
FRANCE WAITS FOR GRAND PRIX DECISION
FRENCH motor racing is waiting to see whether there will be a Grand Prix in France this year as the French government debates a new law which will clear away the problems over television coverage which have plagued the race for severalÊyears.
JORDAN CONFIRMS REPSOL
AS expected Jordan has concluded a sponsorship agreement with the Spanish fuel company Repsol, which is supporting the team's test and reserve driver Pedro de la Rosa.
MCLAREN ON TOP IN BARCELONA
THE McLaren team dominated last week's Barcelona Formula 1 testing with the brand new McLaren-Mercedes MP4/13 with Mika Hakkinen quickest and David Coulthard setting the third fastest time in the course of the three-day test. Hakkinen's best lap was a 1m21.88s which was considerably faster than the 1m23.40s lap achieved by Heinz-Harald Frentzen the previous week in the new Williams FW20.
ROSSET SIGNS FOR TYRRELL
THE line-up of drivers for the 1998 Formula 1 World Championship was completed last week with the announcement that RicardoÊRosset from Brazil has been signed to partner Toranosuke Takagi at Tyrrell.
RUMI FINALIZES MINARDI PLANS
WORRIES over Esteban Tuero's superlicence faded last week when the FIA agreed that the 19-year-old Argentine will be granted the licence necessary if he completes 1,250 miles of testing before the start of the new season in Melbourne on MarchÊ8.
STALLONE TO BASE F1 FILM ON SENNA
MOVIE STAR Sylvester Stallone, who has bought the rights to make a film about Formula 1 racing is understood to have begun work on a script in which the central character will be based on Ayrton Senna.
WHAT IS GOODYEAR UP TO?
THE Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company seems intent on pulling out of Grand Prix racing, even if it makes little commercial sense to do so.
ZANARDI IN DEMAND FOR 1999
NO sooner has the wheeling and dealing for Formula 1 drives in 1998 stopped than negotiations have begun for 1999 with CART star Alex Zanardi admitting that he has already been contacted by Williams, Ferrari, Jordan and the new British American Racing.
BERNIE ON F1 IN AMERICA
IN a recent interview Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone has said that he expects there to be a decision within the next three months as to whether there will be a United States Grand Prix in 1999.
BRIDGESTONE DENIES ESPIONAGE
BRIDGESTONE has rejected claims that Benetton switched from Goodyear to the Japanese tire-manufacturer taking with it all the very latest data on Goodyear's 1998 rubber.
CALENDAR DECISIONS THIS WEEK
THE final decision over the French Grand Prix is expected this week as legislation which will allow the race to go ahead passes through the French National Assembly.
CHINA DEFINITE FOR 1999
BERNIE ECCLESTONE told The South China Morning Post newspaper last week that China will have its own Grand Prix in 1999 at the Zhuhai International racing circuit.
FERRARI MODS GET THE F300 RUNNING
AFTER weeks of problems with the new F300, Ferrari has taken the radical step of botching together a new rear end for the car, using the 1997 suspension to stop heat build up from the exhausts affecting the electronic systems.
MCLAREN UNVEILS THE MP4/13
MCLAREN gave the motor racing press a sneak preview of the new McLaren-Mercedes MP4/13 at Woking last week, but played down suggestions that the team will be a major contender for the World Championship this year.
TUERO'S SUPERLICENCE
WE hear that Minardi is having difficulty convincing the FIA that Esteban Tuero should be granted a Formula 1 Superlicence, which he must have if he is to race this year.
WHAT IS A MECACHROME ENGINE?
OBSERVERS at the test in Barcelona reported that the relative performance of the Williams and Benetton teams seems to suggest that perhaps the two teams are being supplied with rather different versions of the Mecachrome V10 engine.
WILLIAMS DOMINATE BARCELONA TESTING
WILLIAMS took its new FW20 chassis to Barcelona last week and was quickly on the pace with the new car, setting the fastest times throughout the six days of testing at the Circuit de Catalunya.
... BRUNNER TO FOLLOW
GUSTAV BRUNNER is to return to Minardi after nearly five years with Ferrari in Maranello.
...BUT NOT WITH THE F300
THE new Ferrari F300 continues to be difficult with the team now having wasted almost a month without a decent test of the car. The F300 was first tested before Christmas at Fiorano but serious work did not begin until after the team's launch on January 6.
GRIGGS MOVES ON
JUDITH GRIGGS, the chief executive of the Australian Grand Prix Corporation, is to leave the job after this year's event.
MCLAREN'S BEER MONEY
MCLAREN has announced another major new sponsorship deal, in addition to the deals already made public involving Schweppes and Finlandia Vodka.
MOODY TO JOIN BAR
CHARLIE MOODY is tipped to become the team manager of British American Racing.
MOSLEY RESPONDS TO THE EUROPEAN UNION
THE Federation Internationale de l'Automobile is to fight the European Union over its suggestion in December that the motor racing industry is in violation of a number of European Union competition rules. In a letter to the EU Competition Commissioner Karel Van Miert, which was leaked to press, FIA President Max Mosley says that the European Commission "makes a number of claims which the FIA believes are erroneous or based on a very limited understanding of structures of national and international motor sport" and picked holes in several of the EU claims.
NAKANO JOINS MINARDI...
MINARDI has announced that it has signed a deal with Japanese driver Shinji Nakano for the 1998 season.
ONE SEAT LEFT IN F1 MUSICAL CHAIRS
THE signing of Shinji Nakano by Minardi means that there is now only one remaining Formula 1 drive for the 1998 season, and competition for the second Tyrrell seat is surprisingly intense given the likely level of competitiveness of the Ockham team, which closes down at the end of the year.
SCHUMACHER WORKS MIRACLES...
WHILE some people in Formula 1 found that Nigel Mansell had the ability to send people into comas when he started talking, Michael Schumacher seems to have the opposite effect.
WILLIAMS NAMES SECOND TEST DRIVER
FRANK WILLIAMS has named Brazilian rising star Max Wilson as his team's second test driver.