Friday April 30th, 1999
Despite the fact that Eddie Irvine stated yesterday that his car is too slow for his liking, the Ferrari driver is apparently confident of doing well in Imola on Sunday. Apparently, the Ulsterman has placed a 5,000 pound bet on himself to arrive in Monaco for the next round, still leading the championship.
There is a big disappointment in the Imola paddock as the British American Racing team motorhome was not ready in time for this race. Figures ranging from two to four million pounds have been bandied about as to the cost of this extravagance. It was to be the bus of buses, eclipsing even the McLaren vehicles, currently the pinnacles of F1 excess. The reason for the delay is that only two companies in England have big enough paint shops to tackle the job of liverying the new beast and BAR has had to join a queue. For now, they are making do with last year's Tyrrell bus, which has had a new lick of paint. The Magic Million Bus should finally appear for the Spanish GP at the end of the month.
Mika Hakkinen granted the Italian press an audience on Thursday morning. Having said how much he preferred these informal meetings to the pressure of the official press conferences, the Italians repaid his faith in their amiability with their first question: "How much are you paid?" The answer from a flustered Mika was: "All drivers think they are not paid enough."
Mika Salo returns to F1 this weekend, replacing the injured Ricardo Zonta at BAR. The former Arrows driver confided he was a bit nervous as he has only done 50 laps of testing in the car and all the buttons and switches in the cockpit are not where he is used to having them. Another concern is that he has yet to practice a race start in his new car.
Salo's team-mate, Jacques Villeneuve, has got the fashion writers talking again. Having allowed his hair to grow out to an almost natural colour, he has dyed it blonde once again. Maybe he did it to make Salo, who is also blonde, feel more at home!
Benetton's Giancarlo Fisichella became a father last week when his girlfriend Luna gave birth to a baby girl. They have called their first child Carlotta.
Ferrari is trying a new front wing on its F300 here in Imola. It was first tried at the team's private Fiorano track on Thursday. On Friday Michael Schumacher did back to back comparison tests with the old one and declared himself satisfied with the results. Team-mate Eddie Irvine will try it tomorrow, Saturday.
the Jordan team announced it had landed itself a new sponsor - Zepter, makers of kitchen equipment, who were an Arrows sponsor last year.
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