Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
Formula One teams failed to resolve their dispute last Friday with the sport's administrators over a proposed budget cap, and Ferrari took legal action in a French court to block the measure, writes ROBERT GALSTER.
Team owners met FIA president Max Mosley and F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone at a London Heathrow hotel to discuss a proposal many of the teams believe will create a two-tier championship.
The FIA wants a voluntary $60-million budget cap starting next season. Teams which accept the cap will have more technical freedom than those which don't.
Ferrari, Renault and others have threatened to pull out of next year's championship if the cap isn't oveturned.
Mosley called the meeting friendly but said the teams had gone away to come up with a counter proposal.
"They are going to come back in the next few days," he said. "I'm quite optimistic it will get sorted out. Whether it will get sorted out quickly is another matter. If they could think of something better obviously we will take a look at it but I'm very skeptical."
Ferrari, which is leading the opposition to the budget cap along with Renault, Toyota, Red Bull and Toro Rosso, described the meetings as 'work in progress' even though it filed an injunction in a French court to try to stop the plan.
Ferrari chief Stefano Domenicali, whose team has competed in F1 throughout the sport's 60 years, stressed it wanted to compete under the right conditions. F1 'is our life', he said. "We want to fight to make sure we are in the competition in the right way."
Now the main opponents to the proposal have only two weeks to either agree to the terms of the cap, come up with a proposal to satisfy the FIA, or pull out of next year's championship. The deadline for entering the 2010 F1 championship is May 29.
Mosley was surprised to be told at the meeting that Ferrari had filed an injunction in Paris. "I'll be surprised if they get it," he said. "But if things go as they should go, they are going to have to make their mind up - if they want to come racing on the same basis as everybody else.
"Simply being there and spending more money is not fair. Formula One without Ferrari is not as good as F1 with Ferrari. But it would still be F1 and it would work perfectly well. It's just it would very sad to lose them. If we were to say we can't function without Ferrari they could dictate all sorts. Well, we can't have that."
