Formula One news: FIA not willing to compromise with FOTA - GPUpdate.net Formula One



Friday's meeting between the Formula One Teams' Association (FOTA) and the FIA has failed to end in an agreement between the two parties, as Formula One's governing body refused to compromise with the sport's competitors over plans to introduce a £40m budget cap that offers teams more freedom in the technical rules for next season.

The Heathrow meeting was organised this week with no less than five teams, including constructors' World Champions Ferrari, having already threatened to walk away from the sport at the end of the year unless the scheme is reviewed, removing its possibilities of a 'two-tier' championship. FOTA, representing all teams on the grid, received the news earlier on in the day that committee president, Luca di Montezemelo, would not be attending following the death in Italy of his father.

News was also revealed today of Ferrari taking legal action against the FIA through French courts, with the view that the 2010 regulations should be blocked for breaching the team's wishes in an apparent technical policy held by the Scuderia. "During the meeting it became apparent that Ferrari has made an application to the French courts - and I don't know the details - but it is to apply for an injunction to stop us doing what we want to do," Mosley, who first made comments over the 'unsustainable' sport early last year, told reporters outside the Heathrow hotel, "so that is where the situation rests as far as Ferrari is concerned.

"It was quite a friendly meeting, but in the end all that happened was that the teams have gone off to see if they can come up with something better than the cost cap. We explained we cannot put back the entry date, as this has all been published, and we cannot disadvantage the potential new teams who will come in but we are prepared to listen to whatever they have to say.

"In the meantime, the regulations are as published. We have explained that we want everyone to race under the same regulations; we have explained that we would like all of the teams to come in under the cost cap and that is what they have gone off to consider. We have said that we cannot see why anyone wouldn't want to operate under the cost cap and it would mean a gradual relaxation of the technical regulations, which all of the engineers would want. We said, in the end, that the choice was between intellectual freedom and financial constraint or intellectual constraint and financial freedom, which is what they have had up until now."

The budget cap, as well as hoping to secure a controlled future for the Formula One World Championship, is also designed to encourage new teams to submit entries for next year, of which all applications must be received by the FIA by the 29 May. "We have pointed out, and it is something the engineers have said, that current F1 consists of endless refinement at enormous expense and we want to move away from that and have invention and creativity," the FIA president continued to explain, "but we can only do that if we restrict the cost because, if we have unrestricted cost, nobody would be able to afford it - I think some of the teams agree with that idea, and some don't, and they have gone away to discuss it."

So far Toyota, Red Bull, Ferrari and Renault have already made clear messages that withdrawal will be a serious possibility in the event of the rules not being changed before the end of this month. "Well, as things stand, yes that is the situation," admitted Mosley.

"Then they asked about the Concorde Agreement and we said that we would be prepared if there was agreement - on all of the other issues - to resign the 1998 Concorde Agreement and extend it for another five years, but there was not agreement between them and Bernie (Ecclestone, of Formula One Management) on the commercial side, which is unsurprising because they have been talking about it for two and a half years and still not reached agreement."

 

Wow, Mosley is a douche!

I will seriously miss Totoya, Red Bull, Ferrari, and Renault if they do decide to lose. I might not even watch F1 anymore.

 

F1 would be left in shambles if those four left.

 

This is the beginning of the end...

 

I see it the other way round,

I think all the teams should quit and with the backing of their friends in AbuDhabi and Qatar set-up a new race series - with bigger, faster cars


or even better replace the whole F1 thing with something like the old GroupB series where people were racing real cars that you could buy like the 959 and 288GTO

 

Pipe dream. But that would be so cool.

If there were a real race series that required legitimate homologated examples of a car that would have a significant impact on a company's finances (morel like the inventive E30 M3 than $1,000,000+ 911 GT1's, CLK GTR's, etc.) then all the better. And they should race on the best race tracks, including the Nordschleife. Not just the Mickey Mouse, Herman Tilke designed ones in the countries where Bernie wants to do business.

end rant.

 

Sorry. That is just not fast enough for me.

 

After doing some thinking, I don't see why more of these teams wouldn't want the budget cap. It would make the sport more profitable for everyone involved and would be more exciting as well. The only thing the proposed budget cap would seem to have any effect on is testing since the budget cap doesn't include salaries for drivers and executives, nor does it include transportation, hospitality, and advertising. If cap doesn't cover any of those things, what exactly DOES it cover aside from testing and development?

I'd actually love to see more technical development in the sport with the engineers having a bit more freedom to do what they love best. It's that technical freedom that will save F1 from becoming a stock series like NASCAR, imo. Offering a choice of the budget cap is the only mistake I can really see right now. It should be all or nothing. That way, there would be no upper and lower classes.

While I do understand what some of the team principals have said about the series losing exclusivity if a budget cap was imposed upon them, I would like to believe that the budget cap would eventually be lifted as the smaller teams become more established and the economy turns around.

 

But what if there were fewer artificial impediments to development?