Rule Changes, Controversy, Civil War, F1 Marks Its Return To The Sport Stage

(Photo by Peter Fox/Getty Images)

I am not talking of becoming the new Ferrari or BMW, or McLaren, but if Brawn could do it in such a short time, than five years is plenty, unless the team is called Toyota of course.

This “wonderful” idea is as probable to work as a 45 million dollar budget cap. Stranger things have however worked. What the budget cap issue and its outcome on F1 seems to address is a matter of contractual agreement. 

Members of the FOTA minus Williams and Force India, who were suspended due to their decision to enter the 2010 championship, have made it clear that they are pulling out of the sport and setting up their own F1 style series. 

This decision is the result of the unwavering decision by Max Moseley to impose a budget cap. Bernie Ecclestone argues that three of the teams threatening to break away from F1, Scuderia Toro Rosso, Red Bull, and Ferrari, are contractually obligated to compete next year as entrants in F1 and cannot leave the sport. 

According to Bernie and Max they have signed agreements guaranteeing participation in the sport in 2010 and beyond. The key question here is whether the contract is still in place or is null void because of the changes in the rules.

As complicated as contracts pay seems in the end the very nature of any contract is simple. If a person playing for a hockey team signs a contract, the contract remains valid unless a change is made. 

The change in a contract can be considered a breach. Breach of contract is a legal concept in which a binding agreement or bargained-for exchange is not honored by one or more of the parties to the contract by non-performance or interference with the other party's performance. 

A fundamental breach (or repudiatory breach) is a breach so fundamental that it permits the aggrieved party to terminate performance of the contract, in addition to entitling that party to sue for damages.

In other words if Ferrari, STR, and Red Bull all signed a contract based on rules of agreed upon at the time of the signing and the rules were then changed than that contract is not valid. 

In lawyer speak, a violation of the terms of a legal agreement; Default. Breach of contract allows the non-breaching party to rescind the contract, sue for damages, or sue for performance of the contract. 

It is quite simple really. If a tenant agrees to lease at a specific address at a rate of one thousand per month, and then a year later the rent is now two thousand per month, then the agreement signed does not match the current circumstance and so as a result the contract is null void.  

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