By Huw Alban
April 29 2002

After a couple of weeks of furious speculation it looked as if Jos Verstappen might have found a new home in Formula One. The Dutchman confirmed to his website that he had been to the Sauber factory and that there was interest for a development drive with the team - since then it's all gone quiet... The Reuters news agency has been keeping tabs on the Sauber interest in Jos Verstappen, and unfortunately their conversations with a spokesperson for Sauber do not paint a particularly optimistic picture.

"Verstappen has been around to see us and to fit the car," a spokesperson has been quoted as saying to the news service. "He is twice as big as our drivers so we needed to see whether he could drive our car without too many modifications.

"On the one hand, our technical people say that the drivers (Nick Heidfeld and Felipe Massa) are too tired by racing to also do test drives and that it may be an advantage to have a test driver.

"But as Mr Sauber likes to say - we only have one car to test and we are not a large team."