A quick round up of the news items from the last week that caught my eye but didn’t get a full post.

FORMULA ONE

• Veteran driver Oliver Panis retires from F1 for a second time as he steps away from his testing role with the Toyota team.
• The newly renamed Spyker MF1 team will roll out in a new livery for the remaining three GPs of the season, replacing the old Midland team’s red white and grey with orange to reflect the new Dutch ownership.
• The stars of this year’s GP2 series make their F1 debuts at the Silverstone test to impressive results.
• They may no longer be racing but Minardi continue to promote F1 with a demonstration run in Bulgaria and the return of their 2-seater F1 cars at Donington Park’s GP Live event.
• The highly impressive Sebastian Vettel has retained his seat as third driver for the Sauber-BMW team for the rest of the season.
• After a run of 20 years the Honda owned Suzuka circuit will no longer host the Japanese GP, from 2007 the event is being switched to rival Toyota’s Fuji circuit.

CHAMP CAR

• Mario Dominguez swtiches to his third team this season as he joins Rocketspsort.
• Christiano Da Matta is well on the road to recovery and SPEED TV reports that he is flying home to his house in Miami today.

ALMS

• Champ Car star Sebastian Bourdais joins the Panoz team for the Petit Le Mans event at Road Atlanta.

A1-GP

• Former F1 star turned TV commentator John Watson is to give the Irish A1-GP team car a run at Zandvoort.