After a day of letter-sending, the actual details over how far Max Mosley is prepared to bend over for the teams has emerged. The question will now be whether that is good enough to satisfy FOTA's ambiguous demands.
Mosley has laid down the series of new proposals in the hope that it will placate the eight members of the Formula One Teams' Association who are threatening to leave the sport on Friday should the ongoing spat over the future of the sport not be resolved.The proposals are a slight softening of Mosley's tone in his earlier letter to the teams, where he flatly denied their request to have the deadline extended from Friday to July 1st in order to give the two sides time to negotiate, among other things, a new Concorde Agreement.
Mosley's list of offers includes removing the mysterious Appendix 5 from the 2010 Sporting Regulations, which took away the teams' ability to challenge any future regulation changes imposed by the FIA. He has also said that he is "prepared to discuss" any issues surrounding the FIA's Court of Appeal.
On the technical side, Mosley has conceded that a number of changes can be made, including a freeze on designs of the moveable front wing elements, rescinding the ban on tyre warmers, outlawing four wheel drive technology and a continuation of the 2009 engine rules, gearbox rules and testing ban to 2010. This will not apply to the new Cosworth spec unit, which will be allowed to run unrestricted.
The proposals also include a willingness to relax the 2010 budget cap to 100 million Euros, with a decrease to the 45 million Euro limit in 2011.
In terms of the auditing process for the budget cap, which has seen the to sides have very different ideas, Mosley said that the cap would be looked after by "self-reporting of compliance using a reputable auditor", and any breaches would be punished financially rather than with sporting sanctions. This may not placate the FOTA teams, that want their own independent audit firms to oversee their spending.
All this follows Mosley's earlier offer to get round the issue of a lack of time to draw up a new Concorde Agreement by having all sides re-sign a version of the 1998 agreement, before modifying this at a later date.
The FOTA teams will have to respond to these proposals by Friday, or the prospect of them being removed from the grid will come back in to play.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
