22/03/2006
NEWS STORY
It has been revealed that in a letter sent to Max Mosley at 22.12 on Tuesday evening, BMW, Honda, McLaren, Renault, Toyota and the GPMA, raised a number of concerns which they wanted to identify before today's meeting of the World Motor Sport Council.
The concerns relate to the Organisation Agreement, Engine Homologation and Rule Changes. They also raised concerns regarding the restriction on testing (Article 63 b), the engine ballast penalty (Article 86 a) and the new gear box rule (Article 87).
With regard the Organisation Agreement, the manufacturers wrote: "The 1998 Concorde Agreement to which the teams and the FIA are parties, guarantees the participating teams, during each year of the term, a right of entry into the Championship. Furthermore, the 1998 Concorde Agreement provides for the teams, as stakeholders in the sport, to have a significant role in its governance. The provisions appear to have been removed from the latest proposals submitted by the FIA post 2007 and we would ask that provisions to accomodate these concerns be taken into account in the draft 2008 Sporting Regulations to be approved by the World Motor Sport Council."
On Engine Homologation: "Whilst all signatories to this letter (and Cosworth) agree and confirm that they are commited to reducing engine costs, we realise that there is no time to discuss this issue further with you before the meeting of the World Motor sport Council; we would respectfully request that Regulation 86e and Appendix 6 be agreed before the Sporting Regulations are adopted."
As for Rule Changes: "We have noted that the provision for changes in the Sporting and Technical Regulations, which are currently set out in Appendix 5 of the draft 2008 Sporting Regulations, are different from those proposed in your letter of 18 November 2005. We would wish to see the composition, voting structure and process of the Formula One Commission and its related working groups being established in line with your 18 November 2005 proposal. In particular, we beleive that, further to previous discussions, if the majority of teams vote in favour of a change, such a change should not be capable of being vetoed by the F1 Commission."
The signatories to the letter suggest that the changes could be made to the provisions which would better the FIA's three main objectives.
However, in his response to the letter, Mosley notes that it contained no proposals which could be substituted for any of those being presented to the World motor sport council, and which were made available on March 1, and then again - with minor modifications - on March 15.
Furthermore, Mosley points out that none of the signatories attended the meeting in early 2005 at which the 2008 regulations were discussed. He also claims that the manufacturers own proposals which were due to be presented in June 2005 are still not forthcoming.
"In the circumstances, the Council decided to adopt the proposed Sporting Regulations in their entirety," he writes, "and extend an invitation to all interested teams to enter the 2008 Championship and participate in discussions on any element which they believe could be improved."
He adds: "The Council noted that although the 2008 Sporting Regulations are now fixed, any element could be changed on a proposal of a simple majority of the entered teams sitting in the Sporting Working Group (Appendix 5) and that the Formula One Commission or World Motor Sport Council would only reject such a proposal in the overall interests of the Formula One World Championship or of motor sport in general."