Door Open to Villeneuve for 2004, Says Richards

Canadian Jacques Villeneuve could stay at BAR beyond this season despite speculation that the 1997 Formula One champion will have to move on.

Although his manager Craig Pollock has said that Villeneuve is set to leave at the end of the year, team boss David Richards said the door was not closed to him remaining.

"The team is changing," Richards said at Tuesday's launch of BAR's new car that turned the spotlight more on Briton Jenson Button than on the Canadian who has hitherto enjoyed top billing.

"The team was built around Jacques and it is now a different team to the one that he has enjoyed for the last few years. It is a team now that I believe you will reflect on at the end of this year and say is going places.

"As a result of that it will appeal to the best drivers in the world to want to be part of it. I think that Jacques will come to believe that it's the best place for him for the future, and we will be looking for the best drivers," said Richards.

"Sometimes these marriages naturally happen over the course of time and I wouldn't be surprised if we were looking back at this season and saying it just naturally happened and they drifted back together again."

Underperforming Team

Villeneuve, who won his title with Williams, joined BAR from the outset in 1999 and has gained little more than money at a team that overspent as dramatically as it underperformed. The team, now officially to be known as BAR rather than British American Racing, have so far won nothing and last season finished eighth overall.

Villeneuve, one of the highest paid drivers in Formula One and the only champion other than Ferrari's Michael Schumacher still racing, may have to take a significant pay cut to stay on however.

The arrival of Japan's Takuma Sato from Jordan as a test driver at the Honda-powered team also poses another potential difficulty with media reports suggesting that he has an option on a race seat for 2004.

Richards, whose son is a friend of Button and who last year floated the idea of Villeneuve spending a year in CART before returning in 2004, denied that there was any bad feeling between himself and his outspoken driver.

"The press have put a lot on this friction between Jacques and myself but the reality is that, to my knowledge, we've never had a cross word," he said. "We might have differences of opinion but we have very open and intelligent discussions.

"The thing I love about him is that he's dead straightforward, says it like it is and you can have an intelligent conversation with him about these issues."