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Sport - Racing : Motor

FIA insists agreement in sight

PARIS: Motor racing’s governing body, the FIA, on Thursday sought to allay fears that Formula One faces renewed uncertainty by saying it was probable a final draft of the 2009 Concorde Agreement will be ready for signature within days.

Formula One looked set for a split until a meeting between the FIA and the teams’ organisation FOTA in Paris on June 24, which saw teams agree to work towards cost cutting after weeks of bitter rowing between the two bodies which centred on proposed tough spending limits from next season.

But the governing body insisted on Thursday that it was “optimistic a suitable agreement could ready to be signed soon”.

Huge gulf

The breakaway bodies had threatened to leave Formula One fighting for survival given the apparent huge gulf between big-money teams such as Ferrari and McLaren and the sport’s cost-conscious rulers — but the Paris agreement looked to have ended the risk of a split.

Then on Wednesday, uncertainty returned as the eight teams making up FOTA walked out of a meeting with FIA on being told by FIA official Charlie Whiting they were not officially entered in the 2010 championship, contrary to what they thought had been agreed in Paris on June 24.

They would therefore not be able to have say in regulatory discussions.

FIA invited the eight FOTA teams to attend Wednesday’s meeting to discuss further proposals for 2010 but indicated that “unfortunately no discussion was possible because FOTA walked out of the meeting.”

A request for the meeting to be postponed was rejected and FOTA said they had no option but to walk out because they could not exercise their rights.

FOTA blamed

FIA blamed FOTA for muddying the waters in producing a totally new, 350-page, Concorde document, rather than just amending the existing 1998 regulatory framework, a move it said was “wholly impractical”.

According to the FIA’s reading of the situation on Thursday, “much progress” was made between all 13 teams in establishing the 2010 Sporting and Technical Regulations which would be laid down in stable regulations’ within a new final agreement.

Although the FOTA teams later walked out the remaining teams confirmed the changes agreed by the World Council in Paris on 24 June, while FIA informed FOTA that any amendments to the 2010 championship regulations were subject to the unanimous approval of the five.

FIA insisted FOTA knew that unanimity was a prerequisite for 2010.

Earlier, Wednesday’s FIA statement had said that “all changes have now been agreed subject only to the maintenance of the minimum (car) weight at 620 kg and the signing of a legally binding agreement between all the teams competing in 2010 to reduce costs to the level of the early 1990s within two years, as promised by the FOTA representative in Paris on 24 June.”

The minimum car weight is significant because it was originally due to be raised to take account of the costly Kinetic Energy Recovery System which the FOTA teams want to abandon for 2010. — Agencies

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