From GMM
In what is no doubt an eleventh-hour effort to stave off disaster, FIA president Max Mosley is meeting with the FOTA teams in London on Thursday.
Less than 24 hours before the FIA publishes the entry list for the 2010 world championship, a standoff that saw the eight teams lodge only conditional entries by the recent deadline is still yet to be resolved.
Mosley wrote to FOTA this week, requesting that the unconditional status of the FOTA teams' entries be dropped, and McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh suggested to Auto Motor und Sport that the association's reply was "very constructive".
However, Mosley's demands were not met, raising the prospect that marquee names including Ferrari and McLaren will be left off the entry list when it is published on Friday.
But speculation suggests that, due to existing (albeit disputed) agreements, Ferrari and the Red Bull teams might actually be named on the FIA's June 12 document.
The possibility led Ferrari's Stefano Domenicali to issue a media statement late Wednesday, insisting that if a compromise with the FIA is not reached imminently "then the FIA will not be able to include Ferrari" on the list of confirmed 2010 teams.
Although it is more than seven months until the first race of next season, there is a risk that June 12 could be the day on which a split became inevitable.
"If ten (non-FOTA) teams are given an entry there's a major problem," Ross Brawn said in Turkey last week. "So I hope – even if it's a holding position until we can sort this out – I hope there's a solution."
In his letter, Mosley apparently softened his stance in several areas, including agreeing to taper the cap from 100m to 45m euros in 2010-2011, agreeing to shortly sign a new Concorde, and - believed to be at the teams' behest - renaming the budget cap provisions to "financial regulations".
He also confirmed speculation that another highly paid employee per team, for example Red Bull's Adrian Newey, can be left outside the cap.
photo:Logo FIA
In what is no doubt an eleventh-hour effort to stave off disaster, FIA president Max Mosley is meeting with the FOTA teams in London on Thursday.
Less than 24 hours before the FIA publishes the entry list for the 2010 world championship, a standoff that saw the eight teams lodge only conditional entries by the recent deadline is still yet to be resolved.
Mosley wrote to FOTA this week, requesting that the unconditional status of the FOTA teams' entries be dropped, and McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh suggested to Auto Motor und Sport that the association's reply was "very constructive".
However, Mosley's demands were not met, raising the prospect that marquee names including Ferrari and McLaren will be left off the entry list when it is published on Friday.
But speculation suggests that, due to existing (albeit disputed) agreements, Ferrari and the Red Bull teams might actually be named on the FIA's June 12 document.
The possibility led Ferrari's Stefano Domenicali to issue a media statement late Wednesday, insisting that if a compromise with the FIA is not reached imminently "then the FIA will not be able to include Ferrari" on the list of confirmed 2010 teams.
Although it is more than seven months until the first race of next season, there is a risk that June 12 could be the day on which a split became inevitable.
"If ten (non-FOTA) teams are given an entry there's a major problem," Ross Brawn said in Turkey last week. "So I hope – even if it's a holding position until we can sort this out – I hope there's a solution."
In his letter, Mosley apparently softened his stance in several areas, including agreeing to taper the cap from 100m to 45m euros in 2010-2011, agreeing to shortly sign a new Concorde, and - believed to be at the teams' behest - renaming the budget cap provisions to "financial regulations".
He also confirmed speculation that another highly paid employee per team, for example Red Bull's Adrian Newey, can be left outside the cap.
photo:Logo FIA