Audi into F1

[Harry R Glesner III <hglesner@ast.lmco.com>]

Howdy Gang:

  Just relaying a rumor in the F1 Magazine rumor site:

 Volkswagen has made a bid to British defense firm Vickers for the sale of 
Cosworth Motorsports, designer and producer of the Ford engines in
both the Formula One and ChampCar series. If Vickers agrees to sell, Volkswagen 
would very likely take over the sponsorship of the new Ford
engine under development by Stewart Racing this year. One would think that this 
would immediately null and void the Ford contract with
Stewart, but Ford's Jac Nasser, speaking about an earlier bid for Cosworth, has 
said that if Cosworth is sold, Ford will develop their own
engines for both ChampCar and F1. It is unlikely that Ford could design an all 
new Formula One engine in time for next season, however.
Minardi too, might be out of luck with their customer Ford-Cosworth V10. The 
motivation behind the bid is Volkswagen's insistence that its
luxury brand Audi be represented at the top level in motorsports. Audi almost 
bid for Benetton last year in a move that would have seen the
German company design an all new F1 engine. However, VW may see purchasing 
Cosworth as the easiest route into F1, especially since the new
Ford engine has shown potential to be powerful once fully developed.




April 4, 1998

I don't know how factual this is just interesting:

Rick Glesner
Littleton, Colorado