New accord could bring F1 bickering to an end

Outgoing FIA president Max Mosley stole a march on the Formula One teams on Saturday when the governing body made the official announcement of the signing of a new Concorde Agreement four days earlier than they had ideally wanted.
The news also put BMW Sauber into a desperate race to complete plans for a Brawn-style buyout before a 5 August deadline.
The tripartite deal finally heralds a period of peace in a sport that has lost many fans through political wrangling.
It was signed by the FIA, Bernie Ecclestone and CVC Capital Partners who are the holders of F1's commercial rights, and the 12 remaining teams following BMW's shock withdrawal last Wednesday, and will provide the framework by which the sport will now be run until 31 December 2012.
Under its terms, teams will receive 50 per cent of the revenues from the two main income streams, the alpha group which covers television income and income from fees charged to race promoters, and the beta group which embraces trackside advertising, race sponsorship and hospitality income from the Paddock Club. Previously, they received only 27 per cent.
Just as importantly, the new agreement sees the return of the F1 Commission, comprising team representatives, key sponsors and promoters, the FIA and CVC. This will now be the mechanism by which new regulations are introduced in a more democratic manner. A long-standing point of conflict between the teams and the FIA was the way in which Mosley imposed rules without sufficient discussion.
"Following approval by the World Motor Sport Council, late last night FIA president Max Mosley signed the 2009 Concorde Agreement, heralding a renewed period of stability for the FIA Formula 1 world championship," an FIA statement said.
"The WMSC has also approved a slightly revised set of stable sporting and technical regulations [to apply from the 2010 championship onwards], which have been agreed by the FIA and the teams and which will be published shortly.
"The new Concorde Agreement, which runs until 31 December 2012, provides for a continuation of the procedures in the 1998 Concorde Agreement, with decisions taken by working groups and commissions, upon which all teams have voting rights, before going to the [WMSC] for ratification."
The statement also referred to the steps for further cost cutting agreed by the teams in place of Mosley's controversial plan for budget caps.
Against this backdrop Peter Sauber, owner of the Sauber team which was acquired by BMW late in 2005, revealed that he and Dr Mario Theissen, BMW's team principal, are working on a rescue package which would enable his old team to stay in the game.
"I will do everything humanly possible," Sauber said at the weekend. The final decision on whether to sell the team, in which he retained a 20 per cent stake, lies with the BMW board that last week opted to quit the sport.

By David Tremayne

Jean Todt to take over FIA

By anointing Jean Todt as his designated successor, Max Mosley has sent a pretty clear message to the troublesome Formula One teams.
They wanted him out but if they think they are going to get someone more amenable running motorsport�s world governing body, then they can think again.
In fact, they are mistaken if they think they have seen the back of Mosley himself.
As the Briton said in a letter to FIA member clubs on Wednesday, he hopes to play �a modest role� himself in any Todt administration after he stands down in October.
The Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) made their position pretty clear last month when Toyota�s John Howett, the group�s vice-chairman, said �we�d like someone independent� independent of any of the teams.�
Their immediate silence to Mosley�s letter was telling. As Alan Henry writes on the Guardian website, it �confirmed a deep-rooted suspicion that Todt is the favoured successor largely because he thinks like Mosley and, perhaps more worryingly for the teams, may act like him too.�
Todt might be seen as a Ferrari man, having presided over the golden Michael Schumacher era at the Italian team, but there is now a very different atmosphere at Maranello to when he called the shots.
In fact, there is a very different atmosphere in Formula One. Period. You only have to look at Mark Webber�s victory for Red Bull in Sunday�s German Grand Prix to see that.
There has been no attempt by the team to rein in the Australian or make him less of a threat to team mate Sebastian Vettel, winner of two races already this season and now Jenson Button�s closest challenger.
Vettel is German, hailed as Baby Schumi and a favourite among the German speaking element at Red Bull. But Webber led the one-two at the Nuerburgring. It was his first victory but the sport was just as much the winner.
As Red Bull boss Christian Horner said afterwards, the only demand the team will make of the drivers for the next few races is to make sure they don�t race each other off the track.
It was never thus at Ferrari, with Schumacher the clear number one.
Among my precious possessions is a tape of the post-race news conference from the 2002 Austrian Grand Prix with Schumacher booed by the media as he walked into the room fortaking an entirely undeserved victory from team mate Rubens Barrichello at Todt�s command.
Barrichello had led from pole position to the last corner, where he slowed and let Schumacher win a race that mattered little for the championship. The outcry was heard around the world.

Todt has done great things in sport, winning world championships and running highly successful operations. Nobody could question his work rate or commitment.

Alan Baldwin

F1 is Back on Track - No Split

No F1 split in 2010 -
An agreement has been reached between Formula 1's governing body and the teams to prevent a breakaway series, says FIA president Max Mosley.
The two parties had been engulfed in a bitter row over planned budgetary and technical changes for the 2010 season.
But it appears a resolution has now been found and, as part of the deal, Mosley has agreed not to stand for re-election as president.
"There will be no split. We have agreed to a reduction of costs," added Mosley.
"There will be one F1 championship but the objective is to get back to the spending levels of the early 90s within two years."
F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone added that he was "very happy common sense has prevailed" following a meeting of 120 members of the FIA in Paris aimed at resolving the crisis.
Ferrari chief president Luca di Montezemolo, head of the Formula One Teams Association (Fota), added: "I think the decisions we have shared this morning are important. We will have the rules of 2009, same rules for everybody.
"It means that we have stability."

Ahead of the meeting, Mosley had insisted that he would not step down as part of any potential agreement and might even seek re-election as head of world motor sport.
He hit out at what he described as "wholly unjustified criticism" of the FIA, adding: "It is for the FIA membership, and the FIA membership alone, to decide on its democratically elected leadership, not the motor industry and still less the individuals the industry employs to run its F1 teams."
However, it appears Mosley has now agreed to move aside when his fourth term as FIA president ends in October, saying: "I will not be up for re-election, now we have peace."
Furthermore, writs that had been threatened against Ferrari and the other teams in Fota - McLaren, BMW Sauber, Renault, Toyota, Red Bull Racing, Toro Rosso and Brawn GP - are likely to be shelved.

The agreement ends two months of wrangling since Mosley announced after a World Council meeting at the end of April that a voluntary �40m budget cap would be imposed from next season - a plan that prompted a rebellion from eight teams, with Fota announcing on Thursday they were planning a rival series.

But the new agreement ends that threat, while still maintaining the "financial viability" of teams which had been targeted with the initial budgetary restrictions.
Mosley said he had not been forced out as part of any bargaining process, and he was happy to be announcing his departure in these circumstances.
"They (the teams) have got the rules they want and the stability, we've got the new teams in and we've got the cost reduction - that's very helpful," he said.
"I can have a peaceful summer for the first time in three years.
"My departure was planned, agreed, arranged - all the staff have known for months but obviously I couldn't say it publicly because the moment you do you lose all your influence. Now I don't need influence, it's a satisfactory situation."
He was also particularly happy that everyone had got what they wanted from the negotiations.
"There is no budget cap because costs will come down to the levels of early 1990s in two years - it's a different way of doing the same thing. I always thought there wasn't much between us, now we've agreed there isn't."
As part of the agreement, existing teams must help new outfits with their engines and chassis.
"It's come as a bit of a surprise, given that Fota were planning to meet in Bologna on Thursday to discuss their plans for the breakaway championship," reported BBC sports news correspondent James Munro from Paris.
"But what we got today after a meeting of World Motorsport Council was an impromptu press conference and Mosley began by saying there will be no split, there will be one championship.
"He said that over the course of the negotiations he had been able to secure guarantees from the teams who were threatening to break away that they would try to rein back the levels of their spending to the levels they were spending in the early 90s.
"It was him that had come up with the idea that next season all teams would have a budget cap of about �40m, but there has clearly been a trade-off as he has also agreed to do what he says was always the plan - stand down as president of the FIA this October."
It is not the first time Mosley has promised to stand down as FIA president - in June 2004, he announced he would stand down from his position in October of that year, only to rescind his decision a month later and secure re-election.
But he was adamant that with his 70th birthday approaching, and with the row finally settled, there was no way he would be having a change of heart this time.

A letter to Mr Max Mosley

The future of Formula One is back in the melting pot in the wake of a letter to Max Mosley from all 10 teams.
Less than three hours after Mosley had spoken of the possibility of a compromise with the Formula One Teams' Association regarding next season's budget cap, he was handed the letter that effectively took the wind out of his sails.
Mosley had also expressed his confidence Ferrari, the ringleader in the current war with the FIA, would sign up by this Friday's entry deadline.
But that now has to be in serious doubt as the teams are demanding Mosley scrap the 2010 regulations in return for their commitment through to 2012.
That would be a significant move as Mosley expressed a view that two of the current manufacturers would pull out of F1 anyway, regardless of the budget cap, due to the ongoing financial crisis in the car industry.
News of the letter came from Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali following a Monaco Grand Prix in which his team showed a return to form as Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa finished third and fourth.
"What we have asked is to go back to the rules of this year, the 2009 rules," said Domenicali.
"Then we see together what we can do in order to make changes for next year.
"Bear in mind that for sure the cost is something all the teams are fully committed to working on but is something that is related to the business of the teams.
"We know what we can invest. We know what we can do, and this is something the teams can discuss internally.
"We can decide on our own what we can afford to keep the value of F1 at the standard that we know. It is not something that we feel should be involved with somebody else."
Although Mosley had earlier expressed confidence a resolution was close at hand, he also made it clear "the main stumbling block is really the same old thing".
That is trying to keep everybody happy, including the prospective new entrants for next year.
That view was reiterated by Brawn GP CEO Nick Fry, who said: "We are all in favour of a degree of financial responsibility. I know there is no team that is proposing a financial free-for-all.
"We all represent big companies and the economic times are not appropriate to be spending a lot of money.
"The only discussion is how you do it and what the right mechanism is.
"We have a huge range of teams - teams that want to come into the championship that are small and have limited resources and coming from lower formulas.
"We have teams who do have a huge amount of infrastructure and we have teams like ourselves that were lucky enough to benefit from manufacturer backing but now don't have that.
"Then there are teams that are still very large and enjoy manufacturer backing.
"The issue is how you actually find a compromise that enables the little guys to have a fighting chance and the big guys to down-size their companies in a sensible period of time, and that's not easy."