March 17 1996

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All of the information in this section was obtained from a bloke down the pub, which means that while we believe all the following information to be true, we couldn't swear that it is.

What we will say however, is that usually, "there's no smoke without fire".....

Previous Issues

Fangio Ceremony
Williams and Jordan in Cockpit Row
Teams Have Work To Do
Walkinshaw To Leave Ligier
New F1 team launched on Monday
Classified Results From Melbourne





Fangio Ceremony

The main straight at Buenos Aires will be renamed the Juan Manuel Fangio straight in honour of the five times World champion. The organisers of this years Argentine GP hope to have Fangio's nephew drive some of his uncles most famous cars at the celebration of Fangio's lifetime achievements.

Headlines

Williams and Jordan in Cockpit Row

Jordan and Williams are being accused of not following the "spirit" of the new safety regulations. The two teams have adopted a different approach to the new regulation regarding cockpit sides. One moved the roll structure back and the other is using a reclined driver position, both are aimed at tidying the airflow around the cockpit. Other teams have all had plenty to say about the designs, Benetton's Ross Brawn said"...cars going down the route that Williams and Jordan have shown is possibly not in the interests of driver safety".

Jordan's Gary Anderson responded "It's all been checked and is legal, what more can I do?. We have never built anything that wasn't safe and I think Martin's accident demonstrated that much"

William's Technical Director Patrick Head added "I think all this sour grapes is just a cheap trick really...we haven't compromised safety in any way. In fact our cars carry a lot of additional structuring down the side. I would say our chassis is probably the heaviest in the pit lane!"

Headlines

Teams Have Work To Do

The Melbourne GP revealed those teams with work to do before they can become competitive. The Williams team are clearly ahead at the moment, and despite Michael Schumacher running with them for the first 20 laps, his two stop strategy showed that his Ferrari was running a much lighter fuel load.

The Sauber seemed a little off the pace, and could only manage 9th on the grid and 8th out of 11 finishers.

McLaren and Benetton both had poor weekends, and though they picked up points they were both well well behind the winning Williams. Berger was 77 seconds behind and Hakkinen 95 Seconds behind in a 58 lap race! Like McLaren the Jordan team displayed none of their pre season speed, and again Barrichello was the victim of an expiring Peugeot engine.

The Tyrrell and Ligier teams should be smiling though as they both had two cars finish the race. The South American leg of the GP calendar is often about reliability rather than speed and so we can expect points for Ligier and more points for Tyrrell.

Minardi are still not running their new car, and Forti.......well they fell victim to the 107% rule, though Luca Badoer was within O.4 seconds of qualifying.

Headlines

Walkinshaw To Leave Ligier

Tom Walkinshaw is shortly to leave Ligier and will enter his own F1 team. TWR have facilities at Leafield which are thought to be very advanced. Tom said that he wanted to use F1 as a showplace for his technology. He hopes to enter F1 in 1997, but says to do this everything must be in place by July 96.

Headlines

New F1 team launched on Monday

The DOME F1 team will be officially launched on Monday in Tokyo. The team will begin testing their prototype car next month. The car (F105) uses a Mugen Honda V10 engine.The team will use their existing F3000 drivers for most of the testing. Their main test sessions are scheduled for Magny Cours and Silverstone in July. The team hope to enter F1 next year, but this decision rests on the sponsorship that the team attracts.

Headlines

Classified Results From Melbourne

Headlines