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FORMULA ONE: SAP US Grand Prix Notebook

9 January 2001

Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel

Jaguar to be first team to unveil 2001 car; Teams continue aggressive testing

INDIANAPOLIS- On Jan. 9, Jaguar Racing will be the first team to unveil the F1 car it will campaign in the 17-race 2001 Formula One World Championship that includes the second annual SAP United States Grand Prix on Sept. 30 at Indianapolis.

The launch will take place at Jaguars headquarters in Coventry, England. Benson & Hedges Jordan-Honda will unveil its new car at its factory Jan. 16 at Silverstone, while Red Bull Sauber-Petronas will show its car for the first time Jan. 24 at its base near Zurich.

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Testing continues: Virtually every F1 team rounded out 2000 with an intensive testing program. The final two tests of 2000 saw the Bridgestone-backed teams testing at Spains Barcelona circuit while the Michelin-shod teams worked at Portugals Estoril circuit.

Ferrari, West McLaren-Mercedes, Lucky Strike BAR-Honda, Benson & Hedges Jordan-Honda, Arrows-AMT and Red Bull Sauber-Petronas were all in Barcelona for a three-day test. Olivier Panis was quickest on the first day in his BAR, while Nick Heidfelds Sauber topped the time sheets on the second day. Jordan driver Jarno Trulli was quickest on the final day and quickest of all three days combined.

While the teams in Barcelona enjoyed sunny and dry conditions, heavy rains hampered the work of the teams in Estoril and washed out the final day of the test. The fastest times during the three days at Estoril were set by Luciano Burti (Jaguar), Ralf Schumacher (Williams) and Jenson Button (Benetton), respectively.

Testing is set to resume this week.

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Gorne leaves BAR: Rick Gorne, one of the founding members of British American Racing, will leave the team to seek new challenges.

"I have personally achieved all that I can at BAR," Gorne said. "It has been one of the most exciting, rewarding and challenging projects to have been involved with. Helping to create a Formula One team was a major achievement, and Im proud to have been part of it. However, its time for me to move on. I have many opportunities ahead of me, and Im looking forward to new challenges."

Gorne spent the last two decades working for the racing car manufacturer Reynard. Along with Adrian Reynard, Craig Pollock, British American Tobacco and others, Gorne helped to form the BAR F1 team that made its debut in 1999 with former Indianapolis 500 winner and F1 World Champion Jacques Villeneuve as its star driver.

In other personnel moves, designer Mark Smith has left Jordan after 10 years to work for Benetton alongside former Jordan designer Mike Gascoyne.

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PSN to sponsor Prost: The Prost team and the Pan-American Sports Network (PSN) have signed a multiyear marketing and sponsorship partnership. PSN is a 24-hour all sports cable and digital television network that was launched in Latin America last February and broadcasts simultaneously in Spanish and Portuguese. It broadcasts the F1 races live in South America (but not in Brazil) to about 10 million households, and plans to expand into the United States in 2001.

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Jordan to race on water: The Jordan-Honda Grand Prix team will field an entry in the Honda Formula 4-Stroke series for powerboats this season. The 10-round series, run in the United Kingdom, pits identical 21-foot powerboats against each other. Jordans entry will be painted in the teams familiar bright yellow colors and will carry sponsorship from a new Jordan product-EJ10, a caffeine-free energy drink.

"Not only does this gives us a great opportunity to work with Honda on exciting projects outside F1," said Eddie Jordan, "but it also provides a fast, fun and exciting environment in which to promote the Jordan name. We are looking forward to a highly charged season, both on the track and in the water."

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Walter Hayes dies: Walter Hayes, the man who helped launch the most successful F1 engine of all time, recently passed away at the age of 76. Hayes worked for Ford from 1962 until he retired in the mid-1980s. During that time, he was responsible for many of Fords auto racing projects. He backed the proposal that gave Cosworth Engineering the go ahead to build a new 3-liter V8 engine for Team Lotus in 1967.

Ford paid Cosworth -- the engineering company started by Keith Duckworth and Mike Costin in 1958 -- 100,000 British pounds to create the new engine, and in return the V8 carried the Ford nameplate.

Called the DFV (for double overhead cams and four valves per cylinder), the Ford Cosworth V8 won its debut Grand Prix when former Indianapolis 500 winner Jim Clark took the victory in the Dutch Grand Prix in his Lotus. That marked the first of a record 154 victories for the DFV, which was used by almost every F1 team in the 1970s and into the 1980s.

Among the many racing projects backed by Hayes was the Ford GT40 project-the sports prototypes that raced and won classic endurance races such as the Le Mans 24 Hours and the Daytona 24 Hours.

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John Cooper dies: John Cooper, whose cars helped spawn the rear-engine revolution in both F1 and the Indianapolis 500, recently passed away at the age of 77.

While not the first to field a rear-engine car in F1, Cooper and his father, Charles Cooper, are credited with ending the reign of the front-engine machines that had dominated the F1 series. The new era began as Jack Brabham drove a light and nimble rear-engine Cooper-Climax to win the World Championship in 1959 and 1960.

Brabham also drove a rear-engine Cooper to ninth place in the 1961 Indianapolis 500. While a rear-engine car would not win the Indianapolis 500 until Jim Clark drove his Lotus-Ford to victory in the 1965 classic, the appearance of the little Cooper at the Brickyard in 1961 signaled the beginning of the end of the roadster era at Indy.

The Coopers started building racing cars in 1946 and became a major supplier of cars for the new Formula 3 series. In all, Coopers raced in 129 Grands Prix, mostly between 1952 and 1968, and won 16 times. Stirling Moss won the first Grand Prix for the marque with a stunning victory in the 1958 Argentine Grand Prix, and Mexicos Pedro Rodriguez scored Coopers last victory with a win in the 1967 South African Grand Prix.

Text Provided By Paul Kelly

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