Latest F1 news in brief
- Schumacher to attend German GP at Hockenheim
- German GP switch to continue until 2011
- F1 news briefs: Tuesday
- Massa the reason I retired – Schumacher
- Mosley trial decision due mid next week
Schumacher to attend German GP at Hockenheim
(GMM) Michael Schumacher will attend all three days of the German grand prix this weekend in his role as special consultant to the Ferrari team.
The retired seven time world champion, who is from Germany, has attended only one other formula one race so far this season; the Spanish grand prix at Barcelona in late April.
It is expected Schumacher, 39, will be at the Hockenheim circuit on Friday through to Sunday, after he plays in the F1 drivers' football team on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, the latest weather reports suggest that rain is a 33-35 per cent possibility throughout the forthcoming three-day grand prix event.
German GP switch to continue until 2011
(GMM) The arrangement whereby Hockenheim and the Nurburgring annually alternate as host of a single grand prix in Germany looks set to continue at least until 2011.
"We are not dissatisfied with the current solution for alternating. In the current environment, it is the appropriate solution," Jorn Teske, marketing chief of the Hockenheim circuit, said recently.
Hockenheim is set to host the German grand prix at the weekend.
Last year, the Nurburgring was the only German venue on the 2007 calendar, as the two venues agreed to alternate in a climate of higher competition for races from new international hosts.
Teske has now been quoted by the German news agency SID as further revealing that the alternating scheme is contractually fixed until minimally 2011.
F1 news briefs: Tuesday
(GMM) The F1 drivers' football team, the Nazionale Piloti, will take on a German celebrity side at Darmstadt, about a 45 minute drive from Hockenheim, on Wednesday evening. Michael Schumacher is expected to play.
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Joint championship points leader Lewis Hamilton went head-to-head in his McLaren with an executive Learjet plane at the Farnborough Air Show in Hampshire (UK). When asked how it felt to be racing a plane, the 23-year-old smiled: "It was above me, so I couldn't actually see it!"
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A spectacle of a different kind took place at the Hockenheim test last week. Sebastian Vettel stood on the roof of a Toro Rosso transporter as a Red Bull-sponsored motorcycle stuntsman jumped over both. "Wow!" the young German shouted down to the assembled spectators.
Massa the reason I retired – Schumacher
(GMM) Nearly two years after announcing his retirement as a formula one driver, Michael Schumacher has cited his former teammate Felipe Massa as a primary reason for hanging up his racing helmet.
"I stopped because I didn't want my friend Felipe Massa to be unemployed," the Swiss newspaper Blick quotes the seven time world champion as saying.
"I would have had no problem going up against Kimi Raikkonen," German Schumacher, 39, adds, refuting the common claim that he objected to having the Finn as his 2007 teammate.
Massa and Raikkonen, currently equal on points along with Lewis Hamilton in the 2008 championship standings, make up Ferrari's current race lineup.
Mosley trial decision due mid next week
(GMM) The London High Court judge David Eady is expected to rule on the Max Mosley privacy case some time next week.
Lawyers for the FIA president, and for the British scandal tabloid News of the World, gave their closing speeches on Monday, at the end of a trial covered in explicit detail by the mainstream press.
Before adjourning, Eady told the court he hopes to make his decision by "the middle of next week".
It is expected that, if Mosley succeeds, the outcome will be a landmark legal precedent in the realm of personal privacy versus media freedom.
Many of the British mainstream press corps tip a victory for Mosley, whose prison-themed sadomasochistic romp with five paid women was described as a 'sick Nazi orgy' by the newspaper.