Yahoo! For Smoke-free Prost.
The Prost outfit looks set to follow Williams in ditching tobacco sponsorship for 2000, despite becoming almost synonymous with the Gauloises name.
According to the British Sunday Telegraph newspaper, the French team is close to agreeing a deal with internet portal Yahoo!, which will provide enough finance to allow Prost to drop its tobacco sponsors well before the EU-imposed 2006 ban. Insiders believe the Yahoo! deal to be worth $25million over three years, marking it out as one of the first major deals to be struck with an internet firm.
The Prost outfit looks set to follow Williams in ditching tobacco sponsorship for 2000, despite becoming almost synonymous with the Gauloises name.
According to the British Sunday Telegraph newspaper, the French team is close to agreeing a deal with internet portal Yahoo!, which will provide enough finance to allow Prost to drop its tobacco sponsors well before the EU-imposed 2006 ban. Insiders believe the Yahoo! deal to be worth $25million over three years, marking it out as one of the first major deals to be struck with an internet firm.
The agreement will also see Prost diverge from its all-French image, something which was enhanced by its relationships with both Gauloises and engine supplier Peugeot. It retains one French driver - Jean Alesi - on its staff, which is headed up by four times world champion Alain Prost. The second driver is German Nick Heidfeld, who begins his rookie F1 season at Melbourne in March.
Both Alesi and Heidfeld had a sneak preview of the team's latest car prior to the weekend, as it ran for the first time at Magny-Cours. The run-out was just a shakedown to ensure all was in order before the AP03 was shipped to Barcelona for its official launch and subsequent test on Tuesday.
