BAR race into dispute

Grand Prix racing's newest team, British American Racing, will today hear whether they will be permitted to run their two cars for Jacques Villeneuve and Ricardo Zonta in liveries of two different cigarette brands.

An arbitration hearing in Switzerland will consider the team's application to overturn a ruling by the sport's governing body, the FIA, forbidding such dual branding.

Optimistically anticipating a favourable outcome, the team yesterday took the wraps off their BAR 01 challengers at their newly completed factory complex at Brackley, one car carrying the redand-white livery of Lucky Strike and the other the dark blue of the associated 555 brand.

"This is not an argument just about branding," said Craig Pollock, BAR's managing director who masterminded the £250 million, five-year project in association with Reynard, the production racing-car constructor. "This is about having the commercial freedom to carry on our business as we see fit. The right to attract sponsorship is all we have to finance such a big operation and it is not right that it should be restricted."

Pollock seemed confident that the arbitration process would find in BAR's favour, but if not, he may pursue legal action.

The BAR 01 has a Renault-based Supertec V10 engine to the same specification as those to be used by Benetton and Williams.

In preliminary testing at Barcelona before Christmas Villeneuve set the third fastest time and said the new car would make an impact this season. "For certain both McLaren and Ferrari will be competitive again this year," he said. "I also expect my old team Williams probably to have a better year than they did in 1998, and I think we will be in there as well."

Villeneuve repeated his criticism of last year, that Formula One cars are too slow because of the tyre grooves made mandatory by the FIA for just that purpose. "It's just not fast enough to make you feel you're doing something very special," he said.