BMW Sauber have dropped their plans to run Sebastien Vettel in Friday practice in order to give the race drivers more time in the car. Running restrictions this year have made it impractical for teams to run a third driver, which begs the question of how exactly young drivers are meant to show what they can do in an F1 car. Meanwhile, Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz insists that Vettel will be a Red Bull driver in 2009.

“I am not bothered by that,” Mateschitz told Motorsport Aktuell about Vettel driving for BMW. “We have parked him for four years at BMW. We say he is our driver. BMW, however says, he is their driver.

“But there are contracts in place, and if we perform, he will be back with us in 2009.”

A future contract row in the making?

WSR driver Mikhail Aleshin will replace the injured Michael Ammermüller for this weekend’s GP2 races in Barcelona, after it was decided that the German’s broken wrist had not healed sufficiently. Aleshin, like Ammermüller, is Red Bull-backed.