Monday, July 21, 2008

Monday Morning rumour roundup, July 21

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, here is a quick round-up of the rumours circulating in the F1 and IndyCar worlds

We will start in F1 where Ross Brawn has insisted that he will keep the same driver lineup at Honda for 2009. While it is admirable that he wants some continuity in his team, Jenson Button and Rubens Barichello drove like idiots at Hockenheim and there could potentially be some talented drivers on the market. Ross wants to concentrate on next year and building a good car, but I can't see Honda winning a championship with their current drivers.

Last week I said that Forsythe was planning to enter Indy Lights next year and it appears that he may have bigger ambitions than that with reports that he is planning an IRL team and an American Le Mans series team. Plus he plans on running Indy Lights and Formula Atlantic. This seems very ambitious and although we know that Gerry has deep pockets, It does not make sense to be shelling out all that money for teams in four different racing series' He must have some sort of sponsor in mind at least for the IRL.

Tony Kanaan appears to be playing hardball with his Andretti Green Racing team. According to Robin Miller of Speed TV he has given his team until August 1 to sign him to a new contract or he will start talking to other teams. This does not make a whole lot of sense on Kanaan's part as he the other top two teams in the sport, Penske and Ganassi, appear unlikely to dump one of their drivers at the current time and a move to any other team would be taking a step backwards. He has the opportunity to win races and championships at AGR and if he wants to remain a contender he has to suck up any bones of contention he has with his team and, I guess, more specifically Marco Andretti and concentrate on driving.

The rumour mill will be churning about a potential return of Peugeot to the Formula One world. Peugeot chief Jean-Claude Lefebvre was seen in the F1 paddock at Hockenheim claiming to be on Holiday. Peugeot's last venture into F1 was not terribly succesful having never won a race having supplied the McLaren, Jordan, and Prost teams between 1994 and 2000. The Engines were known to be powerful but horrendously unreliable and they ended up deciding that they were wasting their money putting engines in the back of terrible Prost cars and left F1. I return does not make much sense from a business point of view in the current F1 economic structure as Peugeot are heavily concentrated on their 24 Hours of Le Mans effort which came up painfully short this year. I doubt we will see Peugeot Engines in the back of F1 cars for the next few years at least, especially with the future of the French Grand Prix in doubt.

Stay tuned for opinions and reviews of this weekends Edmonton Indy. I will be having in depth coverage without being there, but I will have reports on all days of the competition.

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