The meeting of the World Motor Sports Council in Paris tomorrow will be used not only to give McLaren a spanking over Liegate, but also to push through the official rules regarding the proposed budget cap for teams in the 2010 season.
The voluntary budget cap was proposed many moons ago by the FIA, possibly during an ether binge, but has remained unconfirmed as the teams have struggled to provide the governing body with their proposal for what would be a realistic figure for such a cap.Max Mosley originally proposed that each team could volunteer to keep to the cap, which he claimed would be £30 million for the season, including driver salaries. But the FIA president asked the teams to provide their alternative cap plan last week. The teams have requested more time on the subject in order to discuss the proposal thoroughly, but it now seems that Mosley can't be bothered to wait.
The main focus of tomorrow's WMSC meeting will be the conclusion to the McLaren "Liegate" scandal, but it now seems that the FIA will use the meeting to ratify the sport's regulations for 2010, incuding the budget cap. The final figure may well be left open in order for the teams to respond with their counter proposal at a later date.
According to Autosport, the rules will allow teams who agree to stick to the budget cap (known as "Cost Regulated Teams" or CRTs) to utilise greater technical design freedom compared to teams that decline to operate within the budget. The 2009-spec movable front wings will remain, but CRTs will also be allowed to improve their undertray, and access a "higher revving engine", as well as conducting unlimited in-season testing.
How these CRTs will be able to do far more stuff than non-CRTs, despite having a far smaller budget, is as unclear as it is baffling.
New teams to the championship are also expected to receive $10 million for televsion rights, along with money towards transportation costs, providing that they agree to construct their own car and remain in F1 until 2014 at the earliest. This idea seems to be designed to remove the tricky "customer cars" issue that has rumbled on, with recent new entries Super Aguri and Toro Rosso effectively running chassis sourced from other teams.
The need to finalise the budget cap comes from the glut of interested parties already queuing up to enter the sport under the budget-capped regulations. The USF1 effort announced in January has been joined by recent announcements from Prodrive and Lola that they would be seriously interested in joining the F1 grid under the new rules.
These three were joined in the "interested in qualifying 19th" column yesterday by current GP2 Series frontrunners iSport, who dismissed rumours that their F1 plans were at an advanced stage, but admitted they would be interested in stepping up to the top category should the budget cap rules meet their needs.
Team principal Paul Jackson said that: "For many years I've said if the conditions were right and the numbers made sense, then we'd enter F1," going on to say: "The budget cap could be the perfect opportunity for us, but until we find out what the magic number is, I don't know if it's do-able or feasible. When it's all in print, we'll look at it, start doing our sums and talking to potential investors."
The FIA are likely to react to this flurry of potential new teams by increasing the number of spots on the 2010 grid to 13 teams, one more than the current theoretical maximum of 12.
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