The deadlock on the 2010 regulations failed to reach any sort of conclusion in a hastily-convened meeting between Max Mosley and the F1 teams, meaning that the whole sorry mess will come to a head tomorrow, with the publication of the 2010 entry list.
A last-ditch meeting in London was organised today, in an effort to stop the nonsense once and for all, but there was no real conclusion between the FIA and the Formula One Teams' Association on their division over the path of the sport in 2010. It remains to be seen how many of the current teams will make the entry list tomorrow.Mosely met with Ross Brawn, Stefano Domenicali, Christain Horner and John Howett to try and get the eight FOTA teams to drop their conditions attached to their preliminary entries, in order to secure their participation for next year.
Although there was no definitive agreement from today, the meeting apparently saw the two sides edge further to a compromise. Mosley is rumoured to be happy to scrap the proposed "two tier" rules for next year, removing the voluntary budget cap which would have seen two groups of teams competing under slightly different rules, and also agree to organise a new Concorde Agreement to take effect from next year.
In return, the FIA president is said to be after a commitment to a 100 million Euro budget cap in 2010, falling to a £40 million limit in 2011. Basically the same idea that FOTA submitted to the FIA some time ago.
But with the caveats still in place on the eight remaining FOTA team entries, the shape of the entry list tomorrow is still anyone's guess. Williams, Force India and three of the ten new teams are guaranteed a place, but without unconditional entries from Ferrari, Renault, McLaren, Toyota, BMW Sauber, Toro Rosso or Red Bull, the FIA may well reject them en masse, plunging the whole situation into another few weeks of mindless posturing as breakaway series are brought into the mix.
To further complicate the already complicated enough situation, the FIA are believed to think that Ferrari and the Red Bull teams both have a contractual obligation to race in the sport, something that Ferrari have denied is the case.
The obvious out card for everyone will be for the much vaunted entry list to contain "provisional" entries for the eight FOTA teams, while the endless debating over the rules continues.
Given that this will almost certainly happen, the real interest tomorrow will be as to which of the new teams will be chosen to join the sport in 2010. Prodrive, Campos Meta1, Epsilon Euskadi, Lola, Team Superfund, USF1, Litespeed/Lotus, Formtech/Brabham, N.Technology and March will all be hoping that they get the nod.
Of those teams, it has emerged that former world champion Jack Brabham is planning to sue the Formtech outfit for attaching his name to their entry without his permission. Which was a bit stupid of them.
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