Formula One's Future at The Verge Of a Schism

As we land into another fast-speed weekend, this time at the mythic Silverstone, we must confess ourselves astounded at the magnitude of the latest news that emerge from the F1 world, and to what they could imply in the future of the top category of motorsport.

Has been quite a while since we've first heard of this rumor: it began as a complain. Simply just another complain filed by Ferrari, the most successful team in F1 history and much probably one of the most affected in this whole decade of rule variations, against FIA governing body, a complain that some days later transformed into a formal menace.

What we've first thought, it was: oh, here they go again, these guys. Another soap opera. Ferrari is really losing its nerve this season; their worst start ever, problems with both cars and drivers and of course all this is simply frustrating for them. 

But as weeks passed, the threat began to take shape, and started running down the hill. And to our utmost surprise, it continued gaining weight, the team's voices raising louder, the ice ball getting bigger and bigger, to the point that practically the whole FOTA (Formula One Team Association) has joined together (except for a few minor teams) in this cause against the FIA.

And if we are to credit the latest news about this subject, F1 is at the very brink of falling into a unprecedented and difficult situation. Schismatic voices sound loud enough among the meeting rooms and corridors in Paris and London, and we now start to believe in a possibility that hardly we have thought before it could ever happen.

But what is all this mess about?

The apple of discord of all this row, is FIA's head authority determination to cap the team's budget for next season in 40 million pounds, per team.

Whatever reasons has Mosley to stand obstinately firm in his viewpoint against 85% of the teams in F1, we've frankly failed to understand them. He says that this will help low budget teams to compete in the same conditions with the most powerful ones, and that in the crisis times we actually live in, it will aid to preserve the financial health of current F1 teams, and keep F1 competitive while enabling potential candidates to enter the category.

Come’on man, an overwhelming majority of the teams is against the measure. Where is the common sense? Is really so hard to search for another way to achieve your aim without unilaterally imposing your position, maybe a cross-subsidy or kind of? We are tempted to believe that there's something more involved in such an attitude.

Mosley's moral authority and leadership as the head of the FIA suffered a fatal blow when he appeared at the centre of a sex scandal involving prostitutes dressed as concentration camp prisoners a year ago, and some of the teams and chiefs in F1 clearly asked for his head at that time. 

Henceforth, internal relations with some teams and personnel have resented, and he probably thinks that yielding to their demands now will push him a bit closer to the scaffold. And he is tautening the rope.

But i'm afraid that the rope is about to break, as dissident teams have recently announced their intention to create another tournament. And such is not a good thing neither for Mosley, nor for the fans, nor for the drivers, nor for the sport. Not even for the image rights holders.

He's now been clearly playing the Fabian strategy, gaining time. "it will all stop some time between the beginning of 2010 and March 2010 with the first race, it will all settle down, and everybody will go racing" he declared to BBC sports on Friday. In the meantime, either the king or the horse dies, like in the old Persian tale. Either the FOTA defiant union loose ground, or whatever happens that plays in Mosley's favor.

To add more misery to the situation, the commercial rights owner (Ecclestone) has stated that they will sue some teams (most notably Ferrari and the Red Bull ones) for breach of contract, a decision that does not particularly seems to contribute solving the puzzle.

And at the bottom line of this all us, F1 fans, lay unconsolable and still incredulous on what to think or say about a crisis that has suddenly grasped a sport we've seen and enjoyed since we were kids playing with toy cars in grandma’s backyard, and threats to strangle it. We grow skeptical on what the outcome of all this will be. 

As we grow more and more bored of a season that as far as it goes seems condemned to be one-sided, we also run out of patience of all this non-sport-related arguing, dispute and menace throwing.

FIA and F1 teams are unaware, i'm afraid, of how hazardous could all this be to the image of Formula One, and I wonder if they keep in mind that, at the end, we fans, the very ones who pay to get entrance or watch a race, are the ones who are left nervous and enraged with all this situation.

Better for them to search for a solution, or at the end of this there will be no budget to cap.