June 7 1996
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".....
New Sponsor For Forti
Improved Renault Engine For France
Improved Honda Engine For France
More Races Next Season ?
Chinese GP
Brundle To Quit ?
Magnussen To Go To Stewart GP ?
Barcelona Review
Honda Engines For Williams
New Sponsor For Forti
Forti have signed a new sponsorship deal with Shannon Racing which will see the famous Yellow cars replaced with Green and White ones. Yellow has been a bad luck colour for cars in Formula1, with only Lotus scoring a GP win in an all yellow car in recent years (Senna 1987 Monaco and US). Perhaps the change of colour will bring a change of fortune........
Forti also stayed on at Catalunya to test aerodynamic modifications to their cars, wind tunnel sessions should see the finished results ready for the French GP.
Improved Renault Engine For France
Renault have been under increasing criticism lately for the performance of their engines. The failure of Hill's engine in Monaco followed by the failure in testing was compounded by Villeneuve's engine failure during practice at Barcelona. The Renault engine is still the most complete package in Formula1 and the failures though close together are not related. Hill's oil pump caused his engine to blow at Monaco. The Silverstone engine was a development model, these are expected to fail and Bernard Dudot said "They have to (fail) if you are to learn anything". The engine which failed on Jacques was a slightly tweaked version and Renault are investigating the failure. The next evolution of the RS8 is scheduled to appear in the French GP, though it may be ready in time for Canada. This is expected to offer increased performance without compromising reliability. (Just what the other teams wanted to hear!)
Improved Honda Engine For France
Ligier will also be sporting a new engine for the French GP, this will deliver more power and Honda are expected to have the engine ready for Canada. This should aid Panis in his quest for points.
Speculation that there could be as many as 18 races next year have been rubbished by Ron Dennis. He said that the teams were all keen to reduce costs and cited the 1997 Concord agreement which has signed for 16 races. He added "We don't need more races, 16 are quite enough"
The possibilities of a GP in China look more likely. Present at the Spanish GP were a delegation of the Chinese Motor Sports Federation. It is assumed that they were looking at how the GP was organised in preparation of hosting a race in the near future.
There have been rumours that Martin Brundle would quit F1 at the end of the year. Many people have been surprised by the news, none more than Martin himself who dismissed the rumours.
Magnussen To Go To Stewart GP ?
Jan Magnussen the McLaren test driver is said to be close to finalising a deal with Stewart GP to drive for the team next year. Magnussen the British Formula3 champion in 1994 is currently driving in the ITC championships.
The Spanish GP was run in some of the worst weather I can remember, so poor was visibility that confusion about the race reigned long after it had finished. The conditions lead to a start line incident which saw Coulthard, Lamy, Fisichella and Rosset all collide at the start, Fisichella limped round to the pits and retired, Panis spun into a wall and Irvine spun out and got stuck on the grass. Less than two laps run and already the field had been reduced to 14 cars. Like Monaco two weeks earlier the rate of retirements was extraordinary, the two Jordan's both retired with differential problems on lap 17 for Brundle and lap 45 for Barrichello. Apart from Katayama (electrical problems) and Mika Salo (black flag for using the spare car) all the other retirements were due to spins. Hill, Herbert, Berger, and Verstappen all leaving the circuit for good. While at the front Michael Schumacher in the Ferrari V10....V9...V8...V10 again! was giving a demonstration of wet weather car control, lapping up to 4 seconds faster than the rest of the field and seemingly powersliding through corners just for the fun of it. His overtaking of Alesi and Villeneuve was copy book stuff and the Ferrari team will be on a huge high going to Canada. Alesi struggled with a poor set up, but managed to drive a fine race finishing second ahead of a much improved Villeneuve. Each wet race sees improvements from the young Canadian. Sauber, McLaren and Ligier all scored points again, though all the cars were at least 1 lap down.
David Coulthard will not be moving to the new Stewart racing team, as had been rumoured. His manager said that he wanted to stay at McLaren for the next year as David believes that they are on the verge of great things again. He also denied that McLaren had offered the young Scot another 3 million pounds to stay.
