After the withdrawals of Red Bull and Ferrari, Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone says that the Formula One Teams' Association was always likely to struggle to succeed, due to the level of competition between F1 teams.
The two frontrunning teams announced their withdrawal from FOTA last week, amidst a deadlock in talks over the future of the cost-cutting Resource Restriction Agreement.
The high profile loss of Red Bull and Ferrari, coupled with HRT's withdrawl last year, have led to doubts cast over the future of FOTA as an organisation.
The team alliance was established back in 2008 as a method of giving the teams a united voice in discussions over the future of the sport.
But Ecclestone, who earlier this year suggested that FOTA was an "unnecessary association", says that the organisation was always destined to fail.
The FOM chief claims that the innate competitiveness of the teams meant that an alliance over issues such as cost-cutting was "dead before it started".
"I think [Ferrari and Red Bull] believed [FOTA] didn't quite do what it was intended to do," the oligarch muttered to the UK Financial Times newspaper.
He added: "It is very very difficult for all these people who are competing with each other to agree anything that’s going to stop their ability to win."
Despite both teams leaving the organisation, Ferrari and Red Bull insisted that they were still committed to the current cost-cutting talks in the sport.
But asked if he felt that the fresh divisions between the teams marked the end of the RRA, Ecclestone added: "I think it was probably dead before it started.
"It's pretty difficult [for teams] to ever be able to say 'this is what we've done'. You get all that nonsense, 'oh, they’re cheating, because they’ve spent more than they should have'."
Red Bull in particular came in for criticism earlier this year, when reports suggested that the team had breached the terms of the RRA during their title-winning 2010 season.
The team, and FOTA themselves, denied that any such breach had occurred.
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