SEPTEMBER 13, 2005

So much for compromise

The FIA says that it has received a response from a number of teams after the meeting in Milan on August 31 and says that "although constructive in tone, it contains nothing new. In particular it makes no proposal for reducing costs".

The federation says that new teams planning to enter the championship in 2008 (which, let us not forget, have absolutely no rights under the Concorde Agreement) have said that they can only enter the series if costs are greatly reduced.

This is irrelevant as there is a full field of 20 cars if the FIA stops messing about with the rules and let's F1 get on with what it does best.

However the FIA is taking the remarks of the unnamed new teams and says that it will now review the draft regulations for 2008 "with a view to eliminating unnecessary and excessive expenditure while continuing to allow technology which is road-relevant and interesting to the public". The FIA says that it will aim to slash the budgets of the top teams from $360m to $120m. If this is allowed to happen (and it is impossible to see how one can stop teams spending money if they wish to spend money) there will be massive job losses in the industry.

The announcement means that it is now likely that the manufacturers involved in F1 will have to decide whether they are serious about starting their own series as it is clear that the FIA is just going ahead with its own ideas.

The FIA statement talks about the duty of the FIA being to ensure that the Formula 1 World Championship continues with a mixture of independent teams and manufacturers, all competing on an equal footing in the traditional way. This is all well and good but the new Concorde Agreement is anything but that, with a special financial arrangement for Ferrari which gives the team a massive financial advantage. The FIA is also tasked to look after global motor racing but does not seem to think it is wrong for all the money raised by F1 to go out of the sport to banks and the offshore family trusts of the Ecclestone Family.

It seems that the war will go on and F1 will continue down the path of stupidity while the rival NASCAR series continues to grow.