Raikkonen included on provisional entry.

Sauber has entered its young hope Kimi Raikkonen for next year's Formula One world championship - despite the Finn not yet having the necessary superlicence.

Peter Sauber is obviously confident that a proposed 300km test outing for Raikkonen next week will sway the FIA's Contracts Recognition Board into granting the appropriate paperwork to allow him to compete in 2001. The Board is due to meet in Monaco following the governing body's annual prizegiving there next Friday.

Raikkonen is listed alongside Nick Heidfeld in the Sauber line-up, creating the least experienced pairing in F1 for some time. The German struggled to make his mark in a debut season hampered by the unreliability of the Prost-Peugeot combination, and is hoping that Sauber's Ferrari link will allow him to show the talent that won the F3000 title in 1999.

Elsewhere on the provisional entry list published today [Friday] by the FIA, Jos Verstappen and Pedro de la Rosa are again teamed at Arrows, all but confirming their place in the Leafield squad for a second season. Teams may change their nominations right up to the eve of the first race meeting [1 March], so neither driver is completely safe from the threat posed by apparent test driver for 2001, Gaston Mazzacane, but Verstappen, in particular, is confident that the driving strength will be unaltered.

Mazzacane's hopes of landing a race seat, however, look more limited by the listing, with just Minardi - where he drove in 2000 - and Prost remaining open. The Italian minnow is an unlikely destination for the Argentine given the bad blood between team owner Gabriele Rumi and his sponsor PSN over a failed buy-out, leaving just the cash-strapped Prost as a viable option.

His appearance at the wheel of an Arrows at today's Silverstone test tends to suggest that Mazzacane will move to Leafield as test driver next year, however, with Prost - now buoyed by the addition of Pedro Diniz on both the management and financial strength - possibly considering F3 champion Giorgio Pantano for the seat alongside Jean Alesi.

Arrows will be officially powered by the Asiatech engine next year, confirming the moniker handed to AMT's rebadged Peugeot units, but Benetton has yet to decide how to refer to its Renault engines in the season before the French giant officially returns to the F1 fray.