Civil war threat hangs over F1

Frank Williams (left) and Ron Dennis are at loggerheads with F1 boss Max Mosley

Formula One team principals have met at the Italian Grand Prix on Friday with the shadow of civil war hanging over the sport.

The team owners' secret meeting, which lasted for an hour and a half, was nominally to discuss changes to the structure of the sport, focussing on entertainment value and electronics.

Little appears to have been decided by the team bosses and F1 impresario Bernie Ecclestone at the Monza circuit.

One insider emerged from the meeting to say that there would no change to the format of Fridays, which have come in for criticism because there is no excitement. There had been a lobby to introduce aggregate qualifying, with times from Friday and Saturday being taken into account.

Overshadowed

Ways of limiting pre-race testing on Grand Prix circuits during the season were also discussed.

There was no word on a proposal to introduce a mid-season break to relieve the relentless F1 schedule.

But the meeting has been overshadowed by a continuing row between some of the leading teams and Max Mosley, the man who runs F1.

Mosley, the president of motorsport's governing body, the FIA, has written to Frank Williams, owner of the Williams team, accusing him and McLaren managing director Ron Dennis of trying to provoke the European Commission into taking action to make F1's court of appeal independent of the FIA.

Mosley's letter accuses Williams of trying to disrupt the FIA's negotiations with the European Commission. The move by Williams and Dennis is also technically a breach of F1's constitution, the Concorde Agreement.

FIA president Max Mosley is under fire from teams

Mosley has been fighting to free the FIA of accusations by the EC competitions commission that F1 breaks anti-trust laws.

He appears to have succeeded by agreeing to grant the commercial rights to the sport, previously owned by the FIA, to Ecclestone's companies for the next 100 years after the current agreement expires in 2011.

"I can understand going to the European Commission if all else had failed," Mosley writes. "What I find more difficult is your doing so when nothing else has been tried."

Williams has refused to comment on the letter ahead of the meeting. "I have not yet read Max's letter, but I will probably get round to it this weekend," he said. "This whole business needs to be cooled down, so the less said the better."

The letter comes a week after Mosley confronted the teams about their plans to remove him at a tense meeting at Heathrow Airport. The teams backed down.

This whole business needs to be cooled down, so the less said the better

  Frank Williams

Williams' and Dennis' actions have stemmed from their belief that the FIA is biased towards Ferrari. This feeling has prevailed for several years, but was brought to a head by the reinstatement of the Ferraris of Eddie Irvine and Michael Schumacher after they were disqualified from last season's Malaysian Grand Prix.

The decision kept the world championship battle between Irvine and McLaren's Mika Hakkinen open until the last round in Japan, which Hakkinen won to tie up his second title.

The British teams, who are the majority, believe that Ecclestone would like to see Ferrari win the championship because it would boost interest and therefore business.

Autocratic

The teams are also concerned by what they see as Mosley's autocratic and confrontational style. Williams and Dennis, who are joined in their unhappiness with the FIA by Benetton boss Flavio Briatore, believe that Mosley interferes too much in the running of F1.

But Mosley's letter accuses Dennis of failing to understand how F1 is run.

"He seems to think he has some sort of mission personally to manage Formula One. He does not seem to understand that the FIA Formula One World Championship belongs to the 120-odd FIA member countries which founded it in 1950 and have run it ever since," the letter says.

Mosley added to the Guardian newspaper: "The teams' underlying grip seems to be that they the feel the FIA in general, and me in particular, has too much say in the interpreting of the rules and running of F1 one as a whole. But that's what we at the FIA regard as our job."

The teams believe that the technical regulations are too vague, allowing the FIA to interpret them in the way it suits them.

Bernie Ecclestone (left) talks to Ferrari driver Michael Schumacher

Mosley admits that the rules are written in this way, but he says the FIA has no other choice because of the speed of technological advance in F1.

He sees his organisation's role as keeping a lid on the ever-escalating speeds of Grand Prix cars to ensure that the inherent risks of the sport do not get out of hand.

However, some of the teams want to see the restrictions on technology removed. McLaren has been lobbying for the legalisation of traction control.

The team has long contended that the FIA is not properly able to police the system, which prevents wheel spin under acceleration.

But Mosley believes that to legalise traction control would be wrong because it would take away too much of the drivers' skills. He argues that there is no logical reason specifically to allow traction control and not other driver-aids like anti-lock brakes or automatic gearboxes.

Relentless

He has offered to allow the teams to come up with clearer regulations if they can. This is believed to be one of the issues that will be discussed at the meeting in Monza.

Briatore's involvement with Williams and Dennis is particularly interesting, as the Italian usually acts arm-in-arm with Ecclestone.

He seems to think he has some sort of mission personally to manage Formula One. He does not seem to understand that the F1 World Championship belongs to the FIA

  Max Mosley
FIA president

So far, though, there has been no convincing evidence of a rift between Mosley and Ecclestone, who have been close associates for more than 20 years.

Ironically, their relationship began when as representatives of the teams they took on the FIA in an earlier internal dispute over commercial rights.

As part of that war, the teams staged a pirate race with no world championship status in South Africa in 1981.

This is considered unlikely to happen again because of the massive growth in public awareness of F1 and the involvement of all the leading teams with major motor manufacturers. The car companies are in F1 to boost their images and are unlikely to countenance a breakaway.