JANUARY 22, 2003

BMW joins the pro-change lobby

The mystery of the GPWC press statement deepened this week as BMW men Mario Theissen and Gerhard Berger both came out in favour of the changes put forward by FIA President Max Mosley and the compromise reached at yesterday's Technical Working Group meeting.

The mystery of the GPWC press statement deepened this week as BMW men Mario Theissen and Gerhard Berger both came out in favour of the changes put forward by FIA President Max Mosley and the compromise reached at yesterday's Technical Working Group meeting at which we hear that Charlie Whiting was accompanied by Mosley himself. According to our sources Mosley made it clear to the engineers that he was not going to stand for argument and that he wanted solutions rather than discussions.

"In order to reach a sensible solution, the FIA initially made drastic and ambitious demands," Berger said. "Now discussions have been held and a sensible compromise has been made. Most of the proposals made by the FIA have been approved but with a different time frame. Now everyone has enough time to get used to the new regulations."

Theissen described the new regulations as "acceptable" and said that BMW is already working on them. The aim of the new regulations is to limit costs and make F1 more attractive. BMW supports these aims without reservation."

This means that of the five GPWC members four have now come out in favour of the rule changes, leaving only Mercedes opposed to the idea. There is still a mystery as to why the GPWC issued a statement condemning the rule changes when GPWC members were not in agreement with that sentiment but the fact that it took several days for any statement to be made suggests that there may have been several different drafts of the statement.

On way or another, the whole business has undermined the credibility of the GPWC.