Tuesday, June 2, 2009

A letter to Mr Max Mosley

The future of Formula One is back in the melting pot in the wake of a letter to Max Mosley from all 10 teams.
Less than three hours after Mosley had spoken of the possibility of a compromise with the Formula One Teams' Association regarding next season's budget cap, he was handed the letter that effectively took the wind out of his sails.
Mosley had also expressed his confidence Ferrari, the ringleader in the current war with the FIA, would sign up by this Friday's entry deadline.
But that now has to be in serious doubt as the teams are demanding Mosley scrap the 2010 regulations in return for their commitment through to 2012.
That would be a significant move as Mosley expressed a view that two of the current manufacturers would pull out of F1 anyway, regardless of the budget cap, due to the ongoing financial crisis in the car industry.
News of the letter came from Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali following a Monaco Grand Prix in which his team showed a return to form as Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa finished third and fourth.
"What we have asked is to go back to the rules of this year, the 2009 rules," said Domenicali.
"Then we see together what we can do in order to make changes for next year.
"Bear in mind that for sure the cost is something all the teams are fully committed to working on but is something that is related to the business of the teams.
"We know what we can invest. We know what we can do, and this is something the teams can discuss internally.
"We can decide on our own what we can afford to keep the value of F1 at the standard that we know. It is not something that we feel should be involved with somebody else."
Although Mosley had earlier expressed confidence a resolution was close at hand, he also made it clear "the main stumbling block is really the same old thing".
That is trying to keep everybody happy, including the prospective new entrants for next year.
That view was reiterated by Brawn GP CEO Nick Fry, who said: "We are all in favour of a degree of financial responsibility. I know there is no team that is proposing a financial free-for-all.
"We all represent big companies and the economic times are not appropriate to be spending a lot of money.
"The only discussion is how you do it and what the right mechanism is.
"We have a huge range of teams - teams that want to come into the championship that are small and have limited resources and coming from lower formulas.
"We have teams who do have a huge amount of infrastructure and we have teams like ourselves that were lucky enough to benefit from manufacturer backing but now don't have that.
"Then there are teams that are still very large and enjoy manufacturer backing.
"The issue is how you actually find a compromise that enables the little guys to have a fighting chance and the big guys to down-size their companies in a sensible period of time, and that's not easy."

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