The head of Red Bull, Dietrich Mateschitz, is known to be angry that Peter Sauber, whose team he sponsors, elected to take Jacques Villeneuve for 2005 instead of his prot? Vitantonio Liuzzi, the F3000 champion who impressed Sauber during tests on Thursday. Teams could still spend whatever they wanted, but the amount of money needed to compete would be less.”The news will hit the struggling Jordan and Minardi teams too, as both have deals to use Cosworth engines in 2005. “They couldn’t really afford to be running around at the back of the grid with the likes of Jordan. They should have been up front with Ferrari and BMW, the top teams. I don’t think they had the necessary financial investment to be competitive and in my opinion they shouldn’t have run this year at all.

They obviously have problems and they’re closing a factory so it would have been a bit cheeky to keep the Formula One factory going in those circumstances.”Formula One is a very expensive business these days and we need to reduce the amount of money it takes to be competitive. Ford have also cut their world rally championship programme for 2005. “Jaguar will be withdrawing from F1 effective the end of the 2004 season,” Parry-Jones said. “There was no compelling business case to continue the operation.

We have to be able to win and we just can’t justify the spending.”Formula One’s commercial rights holder, Bernie Ecclestone, admitted it was no surprise “It was inevitable,” he said. Jaguar’s heavy losses have upset Ford’s otherwise improved balance sheet.Ford’s Premier Automotive Group, which includes Jaguar, Aston Martin, Volvo and Land Rover, made a second quarter 2004 pre-tax loss of $362m (£202m). The demise of Jaguar Racing, announced yesterday with a slackness that was in stark contrast to the engineering excellence which has characterised the team’s 2004 campaign, has sent shockwaves through a sport in which at least two other teams are barely keeping their heads above water. He returned to the service park with a branch in the front right of the Focus and a fetching rearrangement of the bodywork.Mark Higgins, also driving a Ford Focus, was Britain’s leading driver, in ninth. Alister McRae bullied his way past junior runners in pursuit of the production class title but his 60-year-old father, Jimmy, was brought to a premature halt by a fuel starvation problem on his Subaru.. So did Solberg – the Subaru driver was fastest on three stages, suggesting he would be Loeb’s main threat.Martin was grateful to be in contention at all after a crash.