Teams agree to leave F1


According to Formula One Teams' Association President, all teams have agreed to withdraw from Formula One at the end of the season should the sport’s governing body, the FIA, proceed with its plans to introduce a £40m budget cap for the 2010 season, the BBC reports this afternoon.

Few details are available as FOTA has concluded their meeting on board Flavio Briatore’s yacht anchored in Monte Carlo ahead of this Sunday’s sixth round of the championship at the Principality, but Ferrari President and FOTA Chairman Luca di Montezemolo has made clear the threat to exit the sport is far from a bargaining gesture.

The teams are now meeting with FIA President Max Mosley to state their case, presumably with their own cost cutting plans for the 2010 season and beyond, a move that Mosley believes is unlikely to yield a realistic alternative to the budget cap.

Asked if he was confident about the meeting with the FIA President, he answered: "We will see. We are all together," he said after the meeting on Force Blue.



"We will be in position to go to the FIA saying in a very constructive but very clear way the position of FOTA," Montezemolo continued.

Insisting that the proposition to Mosley will be final he added: "What is important is that our view of the future is absolutely in common. We want Formula One, we don't want something else."

With both sides seemingly unwilling to back down, the threat of a breakaway series has gone from an unlikely possibility, to a real threat to the governing body and commercial rights holders; Formula One Management.