Ferrari lead teams back into the fray

The white flags were going up over the Formula One battlefield yesterday when Ferrari led the rest of the teams back into the pits where Messrs Ecclestone and Mosley rule supreme.
For weeks, the foot soldiers of the revolution at Ferrari have been trying to convince us that the threat by Luca Di Montezemolo, the company president, to leave Formula One because of the FIA’s plans for a budget cap was serious. But few people outside Maranello believed it and last night the joke doing the rounds in the corridors of Formula One power was: “How many reverse gears does a Ferrari have?”
After hours of negotiations among themselves, the teams under the banner of the Formula One Teams Association (Fota) led by the Scuderia, submitted their entries for next season in time for yesterday’s deadline. They did so, however, on a conditional basis. They said they would race next season so long as a new accord — the so-called Concorde Agreement — was signed between them and Bernie Ecclestone, the commercial rights-holder, and the FIA, setting out the way the sport will be run until 2012.
“The renewal of the agreement will provide security for the future of the sport by binding all parties in a formal relationship that will ensure stability via sound governance,” the teams said. (A potential sticking point here is that Ecclestone wants the commitment from the teams to Formula One to be for five more years, not two).
A second condition was that the teams will participate next year only under the regulations for this season. On the face of it, this appears to amount to a wholesale rejection of the budget cap being proposed by Max Mosley, the FIA president. But sources close to Mosley, were sounding confident last night that the cap would still come in, even if the target figure of £40 million may not be reached until 2011.
Ecclestone was also confident about the cap. “I am sure there will be a cap,” he said. “I think we are seeing the start of what is going to be a huge row,” he said, jokingly. “No, this is the beginning of something positive.”
In addition to the two main conditions, the teams underlined again that they have no interest in a so-called two-tier series in which budget-capped teams race with less technical restrictions than those on unlimited budgets, as had been originally proposed by the FIA.
“All Fota entries for the 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship have been submitted today on the understanding that (a) all teams will be permitted to compete during the 2010 Formula One season on an identical regulatory basis and (b) that they may only be accepted as a whole,” the teams said.
“All Fota teams look forward with optimism to collaborating productively with the FIA, with a view to establishing a solid foundation on which the future of a healthy and successful Formula One can be built, providing stability and sound governance.”
Source: The times