2000 Formula One World Championship (Alt)

This is a fictional account of an alternative version of the 2000 F1 season. For the real 2000 season, see the 2000 Formula One World Championship

The **2000 FIA Formula One World Championship** was the 54th season of FIA Formula One motor racing. It commenced on 12 March and ended on 22 October after seventeen races. This season marked the first for future world champion Jenson Button.

## Teams and drivers

The following teams and drivers competed in the 2000 FIA Formula One World Championship. All teams competed with tyres supplied by Bridgestone.

† All engines were 3.0 litre, V10 configuration.

### Team changes

**Stewart -> Jaguar.** After being bought by Ford, the Stewart team was renamed Jaguar Racing, with the team's engines rebadged as Cosworths. The Ford V10s used by Minardi were rebadged as Fondmetal engines, in deference to Gabriele Rumi's financial input to the team, and the car's main colour was changed from white to a fluorescent yellow. The Ford name, ever-present on the Formula One grid since the debut of the Ford Cosworth DFV in 1967, was therefore absent for the 2000 season, although it would make a brief return in 2003 and 2004.

**Williams: Supertec -> BMW.** Williams switched to BMW engines, replacing the Supertec units of the previous season. The contract, which had been signed back in 1998, marked BMW's return to Formula One after over a decade of absence. BAR, who had also used Supertecs in 1999, signed a deal with Honda to use their engines for the 2000 season. Honda's previous stint as an engine supplier had ended in 1992, when their highly successful collaboration with McLaren came to a conclusion.

**Arrows: Arrows -> Supertec.** Following the departure of engine designer Brian Hart, who had been responsible for the team's Hart, Yamaha and Arrows engines, the Arrows team switched to Supertec engines for 2000.

### Driver changes

**Rubens Barrichello: Stewart -> Ferrari, Eddie Irvine: Ferrari -> Jaguar.** Rubens Barrichello, who scored three podiums for Stewart in 1999, signed for Ferrari, replacing Eddie Irvine. The previous season's runner-up joined the newly established Jaguar team, in what was essentially a straight swap with Barrichello.

**Damon Hill retires.** Double champion Damon Hill retired from Formula One at the end of the 1999 season. **Jarno Trulli: Prost -> Jordan.** Jarno Trulli filled Hill's vacant seat. **Olivier Panis: Prost -> test driver for McLaren.** The two seats at the French team were taken by Jean Alesi, who moved from Sauber, and 1999 International Formula 3000 champion Nick Heidfeld, who had previously been a test driver at McLaren. Mika Salo signed for Sauber after short spells as an injury replacement for Ricardo Zonta for three races and Michael Schumacher for six races in 1999.

**Jenson Button -> Williams** after beating the team's test driver Bruno Junqueira in a 'shoot-out' test. Button replaced Alessandro Zanardi at the team. The Italian returned to motor racing in 2001 when he rejoined the CART championship.

Toranosuke Takagi left Formula One to drive for Nakajima Racing in Formula Nippon, where he won the 2000 title. His place at Arrows was taken by Jos Verstappen, whose previous Formula One race had been the 1998 Japanese Grand Prix, when he was driving for Stewart.

Gastón Mazzacane was promoted to a Minardi race drive for 2000, after spending the previous season as their test driver. The Argentine driver took the place of Luca Badoer, who was unable to find a race seat, and so focused on his role as test driver for Ferrari. Stéphane Sarrazin, who had driven for Minardi at the 1999 Brazilian Grand Prix, became the test driver for Prost.

## Regulation changes[edit]

* To keep costs down, the V10 engine configuration was made fully mandatory in 2000 so that engine builders would not develop and experiment with other configurations. The V10 configuration had been the most popular since the banning of turbocharged engines in 1989, and no other configuration had been used since 1998.
* A change to red flag procedure was introduced, where races stopped after two laps but before three-quarters race distance had been completed would be restarted with the cars lining up on the grid in the order they were at the end of the penultimate lap before the lap during which the red flag was shown. Only the race order and number of laps completed were taken into account for the restarted race, with time differences between the cars voided; as such, the distance of the restarted race became the number of laps remaining from the original races, deducted by three.
* On 7 September, the FIA announced that using cooled fuel during a Grand Prix would be banned "with immediate effect".
* This was the last full season for cars competing without traction control, launch control, and fully-automatic gearboxes, until the 2004 and 2008 seasons, respectively. (*Note: Traction control was reintroduced five races into the 2001 season, at the Spanish Grand Prix.*)

## Results and standings

### Scoring system

Points were awarded to the top six finishers in each race as follows: