Making the headlines - 2001-03-21

Testing at Barcelona, Spain
Jaguar, Jordan and BAR will join Benetton, McLaren, Williams, Ferrari and Arrows tomorrow for a testing session at the Barcelona circuit, while Arrows have already completed one day of testing with Johnny Herbert behind the wheel. Luca Badoer in his Ferrari set the pace in last year's Ferrari followed by Alexander Wurz in the McLaren. Enrique Bernoldi will join Herbert tomorrow, while Jaguar will have Eddie Irvine, Luciano Burti and Pedro de la Rosa. Jacques Villeneuve, Olivier Panis (BAR-Honda), Jarno Trulli and Heinz-Herald Frentzen (Jordon) round out the field.

Rubens Barrichello set for victory at Interlagos
While Michael Schumacher is testing for Ferrari, teammate Barrichello is currently in Brazil preparing for the most important race on the calendar, the Brazilian GP. Barrichello is adamant that he will put up a good fight for his home crowd.

He said: "I am going to go straight back to Brazil from Malaysia. I plan to relax and get ready for my home race, which is by far the race I look forward to driving in the most," Rubens explained. "That has been the case ever since I started in Formula One. I hope there will be as big a crowd as we saw last year. I will be fighting for the victory. Our car is certainly good enough for me to achieve it. I am very excited about it."

Ownership of F1 to be decided on Wednesday
With the 75% acquisition of SLEC, an F1 holding company of Bernie Ecclestone by Kirch and EM.TV, the German based companies have the majority say in F1. This issue is one of the items on the agenda of the World Motor Sport Council Wednesday meeting.

Bernie Ecclestone says that Max Mosley has different ideas on this subject. He explained: "In the last week things have quietened down. Kirch has bought some shares in EM.TV but has no control over the sport. It is not interested in taking F1 into pay-per-view and it is not in its interest as a shareholder, via EM.TV, to reduce accessibility to the sport."

Ecclestone continued: "The car manufacturers are negotiating for a stake. They were not happy but they are now. I'm sure we can get the manufacturers on board and everybody will be one happy family striving to make F1 even more popular."

Max Mosley responded: "We have to be satisfied that the new owner can carry out its obligations to F1. We've had some difficulty in establishing the relationships between Kirch, EM.TV and the trust so we can't discover whether there has been a change of control and whether we're satisfied with the new owner."

Kirch against rival series
Rumours of a split F1 series have made the rounds because of fear of F1 Grands Prix were to be shown on pay channels. Kirch has confirmed on may occasions that this will not be the case, none the less, some teams have threatened to start their own series

Kirch's deputy chief, Dieter Kahn was quoted by Seuddeutsche Zeitung saying: "I cannot detect that Ecclestone is...trying to keep us out. We've known each other for a long time and work together very closely. For the sake of stability Ecclestone would like the manufacturers to be in the company as shareholders. If they want to, we are open to it."