Teams shake it up in Formula One

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR from your humble host, me, Katykarter. Living in Southeast Texas gives us mild winters and blazing summers- and a long, long racing season. Last year at this time, having just completed the last race of the 'o4 season with a win on Dec 15, I was scrambling to assemble my kart for the opening of the '05 GCKI season- at the end of January! As it turned out, I did well, and won enough races early in the season to carry the points through after my money ran out, giving me the points title. Yay! Hopefully I'll be able to race this upcoming season, barring cataclysmic financial upheaval!

Many Formula One teams have changed or been sold and will be launched under new direction, crews and drivers. Two teams that did not change at all for 2006 are Renault, although Fernando Alonso has already announced he will change teams in 2007, and McLaren.
Teams that will change are:
Williams: Lost BMW power plant (not yet known what power they will field next year), and Nick
Heidfeld along with it. To replace him, Frank Williams chose the '05 GP2 champion,
son of former world champion Keke Rosberg, Nico Rosberg.

Ferrari: Retains former world champion Michael Schumacher, but replaces Barrichello with
Felippe Massa.

BAR: Will keep Jensen Button, but fired Tacuma Sato in favor of Reubens Barrichello.

Red Bull: Will retain their present driver lineup of David Coulthalrd and Christian Klein, but
will field a second, "junior" team called Torro Rosso.

New to Formula One

Team Super Aguri: The Honda backed team will use leftover Arrows chassis with drivers
Takuma Sato and Sakon Yamamoto. Rumored to be the Friday driver is
IRL driver Kosuke Matsuura.

Team Midland: This team is assembled from the former Jordan team holdings, and will most
likely give seats to Christian Albers, and either Narain Karthikeyan or Tiago
Montiero.

Team BMW: Will likely be an upper eschelon team, and their driver lineup in no different.
Nick Heidfeld, who was brought over from Williams when the change was
made, and Jaques Villenueve. 2005 IRL champ Dan Wheldon is rumored to
be the designated test driver.

Team Torro Rosso: This is the second Red Bull team, with drivers Vitantonio Liuzzi and Scott
Speed. Torro Rossi is spawned from the debris of former Team Minardi.


ALMS and Champ Car Update:

My home town, Houston is exuberant over several racing news nuggets at the end of this year, the first of which doesn't include ALMS or Champ Car.

Motorsports Ranch Houston is officially open in Alvin, 30 minutes south of Houston. It is a permanant road course, 2.6 mi. We have a video already and it looks smooth, varied and fast.
Can't wait to see some racing there.

ALMS and Champ Car have changes some facets of their combined weekend here on May 12:

Champ Car and Trans Am have parted ways. The Trans Am series, as old as Champ Car will not accompany them for the first time in their mutual history.
Also missing from the weekends action will be ALMS' partner series last year, Speed World Challenge. This comprised of Speed GT and Speed Touring GT races.
Supplanting these two will be the highly competitive Toyota Atlantics and Star Mazda Series, both of which are open wheeled developmental series. Both posess potential stars of tomorrow, including Marco Andretti, son of Michael and Graham Rahal, son of Bobby.