I can't hear the fat lady yet...
This could get interesting, although it could just be more posturing from the teams. Have to say, it looks pretty serious this time though.
Max is meant to be saying if he'll stand for re-election by the end of this month, so this is all a mechanism for the teams to engineer his departure - once that's sealed I'm sure some compromise will be forthcoming. Ecclestone's got huuge (company) debts plus an ex-wife to pay off, so far all his tough talk he's going to be mediating like mad.
Don't the teams normally have 'til something like September to sign up? I stil hope this will be resolved, even though with the announcement this morning it looks unlikely
Nope, Max brought the submission date (hmmm, praps he uses those words differently) forward to 12th June, then when the FOTA teams did the conditional entry thing he gave them another week, so that's the end of business today. IIRC there is some possibility of later entry as long as places are still available and the teams pay some sort of late entry penalty, but it's likely that Max will start trying to sign up all of the little guys that were refused entry last week.
Sadly off the track is definitely more interesting than on the track.
I hope they cave in to FOTA. I really do but the holding company that bought F1's rights is massively in debt (billions) so this could drag into the court room with alot of disruption as Mosley wont want to see it go down.
Looks like Lola and Prodrive are looking for an in with this new series as well (according to rumours), and if more of these new teams decide to go with FOTA there may not be enough cars on the grid next season to make it worth a damn.
The writing has been on the wall for far too long with this - Max has been on some kind of mad power trip and Bernie thought he had the whole thing stitched up financially. This may be a good thing... in a year or two.
I agree. Ecclestone has been running the show for too long. Time for a shake up. The drivers will still drive, the teams and engineers will still make fast cars, and I'm sure there are plenty of people capable of running these events.
Nope, Max brought the submission date (hmmm, praps he uses those words differently) forward to 12th June, then when the FOTA teams did the conditional entry thing he gave them another week, so that's the end of business today.
i know that, what I'm saying is that [i]normally[/i] they'd have had 'til about september. I suspect there may be some months remaining in this debate. God knows Mad Max has shifted the goalposts enough times in the past. What's one more amended deadline?
I think Bernie will see which way the war is going and jump onto the winning side. Moseley will prevail or fall on this one. Cant see the teams being able to organise a championship for next year at such short notice. Could they get enough races together at tracks with the facilities they need that arent already contracted to F1??
