Who might badge Cosworth F1 engine?
Hyundai has been sniffing around F1 for some time but has made no moves while Porsche is making too much money to need to advertise its products. Volkswagen has recently decided to strengthen its motorsport involvement and on November 1 established a company called Volkswagen Motorsport GmbH, which combines the various activities of Volkswagen in competition. The new body is to be headed by Denmark's Kris Nissen, who will report to board member Prof. Dr. Wilfried Bockelmann. Nissen, a former racer who had aspirations of F1 and tested a Zakspeed F1 car in the late 1980s, later had a terrible fiery accident in a sports car race in Japan but came back from that to be a frontrunner in the DTM and in 1994 was even given a Formula 1 test by Sauber. He has been responsible for the race and rally activities of VW since July 2003. The main activity of Volkswagen Motorsport at the moment is raid rallying with the VW Touareg and the organization has just announced its team for the 2005 Dakar with three former winners Jutta Kleinschmidt, Juha Kankkunen and Bruno Saby being joined by NASCAR driver Robby Gordon. "With the formation of Volkswagen Motorsport GmbH and the corresponding new structure, we have created an excellent base from which to compete in motorsport at the highest level in an objective, professional and successful way," Nissen said when the program was launched. It is no secret that Vow’s boss Bernd Pischetsrieder is a great fan of F1, having been behind the decision to get BMW into the sport when he was with the Munich car maker but he has been concentrating in recent years on getting some of VW's marques sorted out. He has often said that reviving the Bugatti name is VW's project equivalent to F1 at the moment. That job is now reaching its conclusion with the much-delayed Bugatti Veyron super car finally getting close to production and Thomas Bscher, an investment banker who enjoyed a very successful career in sports car racing in the 1990s, now looking ahead to new models which will be aimed at the Ferrari market.