There are lots of new rumours about Villeneuve and Prost. Although I wrote on 8th April 1997, that I don't believe, that Jacques Villeneuve will drive for Team Prost in 1998, there are some very interesting facts, so, I think it's time to mention some of them...

One of those facts is, that a company called "Prost Marketing" has been founded in France. The founders were: Alain Prost, Craig Pollock (he's the manager and friend of Jacques Villeneuve) and the former Senna-manager Julian Jakobi.

Now, there are rumours, that Alain has had a meeting with Adrian Reynard (he's a producer of racing cars from England) in Paris, where they discussed the idea of working together to build a new F1-car. This seems to be true, as it seems, that Alain's friend and F1-cars constructor, John Barnard, will sign a contract with Arrows, although Alain wanted to have him in his team since he had the idea to have an own F1-team the first time.

A possible sponsor of the car could be "British American Tabacco (BAT)". This company wants to put the trademark "Lucky Strike" into F1-sponsoring. Rumours say, that they would pay 375 Mio Dollar for five years. But Team Prost GP has already a cigarette sponsorship with SEITA (Gauloises). It seems, that this would be no problem, as SEITA is distributing the trademark "Lucky Strike" in France as a partner of BAT.

I'm still not sure, if all the rumours are true. I just can't believe, that Jacques Villeneuve will leave the best team to go to a team, which might be one of the best teams, o.k., but it's not really proved, that they will be the best team - and every new team in F1 has difficulties to win right from the start...

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