Customer car row to be settled before Spanish GP

14/04/2007

Spyker team boss Colin Kolles is hopeful that the customer car row will be settled before next month's Spanish Grand Prix, despite the failure to reach an agreement during a two hour meeting in Bahrain.

All eleven team principals met with Bernie Ecclestone to discuss the matter, but after two hours of negotiations a solution could still not be found.

"I'm still plodding away at it," the Englishman told reporters. "It's very hard to get these people to agree. It's always good for somebody today and then tomorrow it's bad for them."

Spyker has already gone to arbitration, but last week stunned the paddock by protesting the Toro Rosso cars. The protest was subsequently thrown out by the stewards because the arbitration process is already underway.

It's widely though that the issue will be solved by Ecclestone coming up with the right kind of financial inducement, but that will need the agreement of all the teams.

"I think that now almost everybody realises that we are right," Kolles told reporters following the meeting. "Even Honda would accept the proposal that the Super Aguri car is a Honda car.

"I do not know how near we are to a solution," he admitted. "But at least it's getting more and more obvious. I think there will be a proposal from Bernie, between now and Barcelona. It will be an exact definition of a constructor and what benefits a constructor and an entrant should get. There is a difference between an entrant and a constructor.

"We have no major issue that they are running their cars, but in our opinion they are not constructors so they don't deserve constructors' points and constructors' money," he added. "There must be some compromise. I know what it is but we have to wait."

But we know what it is Colin, and so does everyone else, it's the stuff that powers Formula One... money, dough, filthy lucre, gelt, green, lolly, dosh, wonga, mazuma, moolah!