Flavio Briatore could be readying to burst back into formula one.

Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport said the ousted and formerly banned Italian is busily writing regulations for a ‘GP1′ championship.

They could be adopted should the FIA not sign up to the 2013 Concorde Agreement, according to the report.

Apparently, the political rumblings in F1 at present are not limited to the sport’s planned floatation, or Bernie Ecclestone’s spat with Mercedes.

Cost-control is also a buzzword. As reported recently, the vast majority of F1′s teams want the FIA to enshrine cost-cutting in the actual sporting regulations, even to the point of pushing for a once highly-controversial budget cap.

F1 chief executive Ecclestone, however, is not famously close with the FIA’s new president Jean Todt, and according to Auto Motor und Sport he is not convinced that the Paris federation needs to write and control the rules.

Enter Briatore. The German report said Ferrari will be a fan of the former Renault chief’s rumoured regulations, as they steer away from the premium on aerodynamics.

Preparations for the inaugural Russian grand prix in 2014 appear to have hit a roadblock.

We reported last weekend that rumours were circulating in the Barcelona paddock that the Sochi race now appears “doomed”.

The state owned Moscow news agency Ria Novosti now reports that political issues have created “serious delays” in the race’s preparations, according to an adviser with the Russian Automobile Federation.

The official, Igor Yermilin, insisted that the project is not doomed, but he said very few efforts have taken place following the bureaucratic reshuffling of the local Krasnodar region.

He said some officials of the Omega company, responsible for the F1 circuit project, have lost their jobs.

“In the Krasnodar region there has been have been quite serious changes in the leadership,” Yermilin said, “including people from Omega who signed the contract on holding the Russian grand prix”.

The coastal city Sochi is also scheduled to host the 2014 Winter Olympics.

“The main thing at the moment is the Olympics — the grand prix is on the back burner,” said Yermilin.

Martin Brundle has admitted he is surprised HRT is still struggling so much at the start of its third season in formula one.

Better known then as ‘Hispania’, the Spanish team was founded by Adrian Campos after former FIA president Max Mosley opened up three new places in pitlane for the start of the 2010 season.

But last year, the team’s second group of owners – the Carabante family – passed the baton yet again to Thesan Capital, who have rebuilt HRT in the wake of the management and infrastructure that was brought by former boss Colin Kolles.

Even so, the highly respected British commentator and former grand prix veteran Martin Brundle is surprised that Pedro de la Rosa and Narain Karthikeyan are struggling so much with the team’s Cosworth-powered 2012 car.

“Somebody’s got to be at the front, somebody’s got to be at the back,” the Briton told the BBC motoring programme Top Gear’s website.

“(But) the HRT is particularly poor at the moment, and it confuses me why in year three it’s worse than it was in year one.”

Carlos Gracia, an FIA vice-president and head of Spain’s motor racing federation, doesn’t fully agree.

Speaking to the sports newspaper Marca, he explained that veteran de la Rosa faces a “handicap” as the Spaniard races with HRT this year.

“He knows where he is; in a brand new team, although some people believe it is their third year.

“They have begun again, but it seems that they are in a situation where they have only just started and yet they have to clean up the image of the other years.

“That’s his handicap, but the team will have credibility because of Pedro and also because of a good business investment,” added Gracia.

The FIA has dismissed the latest rumours about next month’s Bahrain grand prix.

Some publications this week said F1′s governing body was in the process of drafting a statement announcing that the Sakhir race has been cancelled due to security concerns.

But the FIA’s director of communications Norman Howell angrily denied those reports.

At the same time, Sheikh Abdullah bin Isa al-Khalifa, Bahrain’s motor racing federation chief and also an FIA world council member, admitted he could not guarantee the safety of F1′s travelling personnel next month.

“There are no guarantees in this world,” he is quoted by PA Sport, after admitting “disturbances” in Bahrain are still taking place.

“You could be (in danger) anywhere, even Silverstone.

“All I can guarantee you is you will be as safe as at any other grand prix.”

Asked if there will be extra security measures in place, Khalifa answered: “No, absolutely not. It will be life as normal.

“We’ve never had any violence towards foreigners simply because they are foreigners or in F1.”

F1 industry monitor Formula Money has found that the Bahrain grand prix is more commercially successful for teams and trackside advertisers even than Monaco, Spa and Monza.

The publication also said that if the 2012 race is cancelled, “the teams could lose $44.7m of prize money”.

The race to put the French grand prix back on track will be over in three weeks.
That is the claim of Nicolas Deschaux, the president of the country’s motor sport federation who admitted concern the deal to put Paul Ricard on the 2013 calendar is not yet done.

France has been missing from the calendar since Magny-Cours last held a grand prix in 2008, but efforts have been made to annually alternate a race between Paul Ricard – a track in Le Castellet, near Marseille – and Belgium’s fabled Spa Francorchamps.

Deschaux told RMC the project needs to reach the finish-line within three weeks.

“We have always been working very hard,” he said. “We have arrived in the home stretch, where either we come to finalise within three weeks, or we will go on a path that forces us to postpone.”

All the hard work has finally paid off today as the F112, the car with which HRT Formula 1 Team will compete this season, completed its first laps at the Circuit de Catalunya, in Barcelona.

Since the car passed the last crash test and was homologated, the team has carried out work shifts to cover 24 hours a day to make sure it could make it, for the first time in its history, to the first Grand Prix of the season having run previously.

The car was able to run after the team took advantage of one of the filming days available during the season.

The car made it to the circuit from Munich, Germany, just after one in the afternoon and the mechanics and engineers got straight down to business, working on relevant adjustments. It was a combined team effort, working against the clock, which saw its rewards four hours later when Narain Karthikeyan led the car out onto the track. Pedro de la Rosa, Dani Clos and Tonio Liuzzi were also present, as were Carlos Gracia, President of the Spanish Motorsports Federation and Salvador Servià, General Director of the Circuit de Catalunya.

The tests were carried out without any setbacks and the car carried out over ten laps. The team was able to check that the car functioned properly both from a mechanical and aerodynamic point of view as from a systems standpoint.

The team will prepare the necessary material in the upcoming days and head down under for the first Grand Prix of the season which will take place at Melbourne, Australia, in just two weeks.

Narain Karthikeyan: “Today was a shakedown of the F112 and I have had the honour to be the first driver to test it. The first impressions are quite good; it’s definitely a step up from last year. We couldn’t do any set-up work or stuff like that but everything seems to be working fine and there are no major problems so we can look forward to the season now. Everyone has worked hard and the new team management has put everything together in a very short period of time. They’ve done a proper job with the car and I’m sure that it’s a big step forward from last year, so hopefully we can take the competition to the teams we were fighting last year”.

Pedro de la Rosa: “Today has been a very special day because the car saw the light for the first time; Narain did some installation laps and then various times laps without any issues. This is very important, it might not seem like it, but any sort of mileage before Australia is vital to see that the car is in good conditions. From here it is our job to try and improve it and make it progress”.

Luis Péres-Sala, Team Principal: “I’m very satisfied today as it is a very important day for us because we were able to test some things out with the new car during this filming day. I’m very proud of each and every member of this team because everyone has contributed their little bit for this to be possible. Now we have to focus on Australia because we still have a lot ahead”.

The FIA is moving to clamp down even harder on the aerodynamic use of exhaust gases ahead of the 2012 season.
F1′s governing body had already announced the end of the so-called ‘blown diffuser’ era by dictating the positioning of the exhausts and limiting the allowable off-throttle engine maps for 2012.

But Italy’s Autosprint reports that, following fears the new rules could also have been exploited by teams, the FIA has “turned the screw” even tighter.

The Paris federation has reportedly said that the 2012 version of the software to electronically control the engine will be “even more limited” than was previously expected.

Williams’ new chief engineer Mark Gillan is quoted as saying: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a year when there were no loopholes in the technical regulations.

“That is one of the most enjoyable aspects of our work — to seek out areas in which the rules are vague and can be exploited.”

A race contract for an inaugural Bulgarian grand prix in 2012 could be signed as soon as next month, according to the head of the south east European country’s motor racing federation.

A proposed race in Bulgaria has been on the table for some time, including when F1 chief executive met with the country’s economy minister at Monza last month.

If talks with a funding consortium reportedly comprised of Arab, US and Canadian companies and the government go well, Ecclestone could travel to capital Sofia to sign the contract between November 15 and December 15, Bogdan Nikolov told the Sofia news agency Novinite.

The report said Bulgaria aims to be unique on the F1 calendar by having an asphalt surface that can be artificially heated.

Nikolov, chairman of the Bulgarian Motorcycling Federation, added that the circuit will bid for both F1 and its two-wheeled equivalent MotoGP.

“We have created a project that meets the requirements of both FIA and (MotoGP governing body) FIM,” he said.

Jean Todt has poured cold water on reports Africa might join the formula one calendar in the next few years.

While South Africa hosted the football World Cup earlier this year, F1 chief executive Bernie Ecclestone said he hoped the continent would be on the calendar “in about three years time”.

Around the same time, it emerged a consortium was working on a F1 project that had requested state support from president Jacob Zuma.

But according to the president of F1′s governing body FIA, “I don’t see any opportunity in the next three to five years,” Frenchman Todt said on a visit to Kenya.

The Associated Press quoted Todt, who had been invited by the Kenya Motor Sports Federation, as saying a world rally or cross country event is more likely.

“Africa is a fantastic field to organise road racing,” he confirmed.

A deal to host at least seven Russian grand prix in Sochi beginning in 2014 has been reached, the country’s president Vladimir Putin announced on Thursday.

“An agreement with the (sport’s) organising company has been reached,” he told investors in the Black Sea resort city, according to the state news agency Ria Novosti.

F1 chief executive Bernie Ecclestone was reportedly also in Sochi to sign the contract.

“In order to organise the work properly, we should create a management company here, in our country.  It should consist of private national companies,” Putin added.

The report said some of Russia’s biggest companies, including the state enterprise Rostekhnologii, mobile phone operator Megafon, oil company Lukoil and aluminum giant Rusal will invest in the circuit that could cost $200 million.

Nikolai Fomenko, boss of Marussia, said last month that he planned to bring the Russian sports car maker into F1 in 2012.  The company already sponsors the Virgin team.

“The signing of the agreement to stage a grand prix in Sochi will help put a Russian team in F1,” said Igor Yermilin, an official of the Russian Motor Racing Federation.

7 million euros will be missing from the budget of F1′s governing FIA in 2011.

A report in the British Express newspaper claims the shortfall is due to the expiry of a fourteen-year run of annual fees paid by Formula One Management, headed by chief executive Bernie Ecclestone.

The deal, in which the sport’s commercial rights were handed over to Ecclestone, was signed in 1997.

The report said the 7 million loss represents 15 per cent of the FIA’s 48m annual budget, while the commercial rights generate almost a billion euros every year for FOM.

Experts said the FIA might have to revert to raising fees such as those paid by F1 drivers for their super licenses.

But a spokesman for the Paris-based Federation said: “I can’t give you the detail but it is not the case (that there is a hole in the budget).”

The FIA raised nearly 12,000 euros during the British grand prix weekend, mainly by imposing fines on F1 drivers for speeding.

Pedro de la Rosa’s 4,200 fine was the biggest for speeding, while Toro Rosso was fined $5000 for unsafely releasing Jaime Alguersuari into the pitlane.

F1′s governing body is not expected to take action against Fernando Alonso or Ferrari.

The Italian team’s response to the outcome of the Valencia race has been incandescent, including Fernando Alonso saying Lewis Hamilton’s meagre treatment by the stewards amounted to “manipulation”.

Ferrari vice-president Piero Ferrari said the mere drive-through penalty for McLaren driver Hamilton’s overtaking of the safety car made the European GP a “false race”.

And reports on the team’s official website have quoted fans as saying Hamilton is a liar and a cheat, McLaren “thieves”, and the FIA a “Federation of clowns”.

British newspaper The Mirror correspondent Byron Young wrote on Twitter that in “Max Mosley’s day”, sanctions would now be likely, adding: “Are the FIA going to act or will Jean Todt dodge the first big F1 test of his presidency?”

According to sources on Monday, the FIA is not considering action.

Ferrari’s rage against the outcome of the European grand prix went from bad to worse on Monday.

With Fernando Alonso having accused the stewards of manipulating the Valencia race, the Italian team echoed the apparent view of some fans that Lewis Hamilton’s drive-through penalty for overtaking the safety car was a “scandal”.

But in another website report on Monday, Ferrari stepped up its attack, repeating the view of one fan that had hit out at “McLaren thieves” who were “up to their usual dirty tricks”.

Another fan said: “The FIA at Valencia showed it’s not entirely in charge of the events that it’s organising”, and yet another added: “Is this the latest version of Jean Todt?  Those who order and manipulate are always the same.”

Ferrari quoted another fan as saying: “Federation of clowns!  What help is a five-second penalty?  Useless and the usual English mafia!”

And another: “Enough with the help for Hamilton.  How can he lie and cheat and still get away scot-free?”

Mirror correspondent Byron Young wrote on Twitter that in “Max Mosley’s day”, there would be “sanctions” for accusing the FIA of fixing races.

When the rage intensified on Monday, he added: “Are the FIA going to act or will Jean Todt dodge the first big F1 test of his presidency?”

(GMM)

Epsilon Euskadi has a better chance of winning a spot on the formula one grid now that Max Mosley has departed.

That is the suggestion of Carlos Gracia, the head of Spain’s motor racing federation.

He told the Marca sports newspaper that the Spanish outfit has the “best facilities” of the other hopefuls but still missed out on a 2010 debut to HRT, Virgin and Lotus.

“When the old FIA granted the licenses to be in formula one it was done with haste and with not accurately assessing the infrastructure.

“I think and I hope that now it will be different,” added Gracia, referring to the appointment of Jean Todt as the new FIA president.

1996 world champion Damon Hill, who acted as a steward in Monaco last weekend as part of a Todt initiative, also backs the sport’s new regime.

“I think we’ve come through a phase in formula one history that has been quite turbulent,” he told GP Week.

“Now things seem to have settled down and we’re focusing again on racing.  That’s the way it should be.

“Before, it was like having a film director who wanted to be in his own film,” added Hill.

(GMM)

May 5 (GMM)  Former F1 driver Derek Warwick will be the driver representative in the stewards room this weekend in Barcelona, it has been confirmed.

After Alain Prost, Tom Kristensen, Johnny Herbert and Alex Wurz fulfilled the FIA duties at the first four races of 2010, it is now the turn of Briton Warwick, a veteran of 162 grands prix between 1981 and 1993.

Another notable F1 steward in Spain this weekend is Nicolas Deschaux, the president of France’s motor racing federation FFSA.