FIA President Max Mosley has today sent the following letter to the Formula One Teams Association (FOTA)

Gentlemen

Thank you for your letter of 4 November.

As you already know, your earlier letter of 31 October reached us in time for the proposal signed by all the teams on 30 October to be put before the World Motor Sport Council, who agreed to it. I am pleased to say that the three-race engine will therefore be part of the 2009 regulations.

However, your letter of 4 November did not reach me until after the beginning of the meeting on 5 November and we were therefore unable to deal with it.

Having now had an opportunity to review your letter of 4 November, I must say we greatly appreciate what is clearly a significant effort to reduce costs. However, cost reductions of the order mentioned in your third paragraph are inadequate having regard to the current economic situation. Reductions of €20-48 million per year will not save the independent teams, nor will they reduce the budgets of the major manufacturers to a level at which we can feel confident of their continued participation.

If I may approach the questions in more detail.

Power Train

Engines

We understand that the FOTA proposal is to produce a €5 million engine from 2011. We are in fact looking for a complete power train (ie engine plus transmission) for less than €5 million and we believe it is essential to have this in place for 2010 and not wait until 2011. By 2011, it may be too late.

Furthermore, we understand that instead of an inexpensive but high-tech in-line 4-cylinder engine, FOTA are now considering developing a brand new V6 for 2011. In our view, the latter would rightly be seen by the public as an inferior version of what we already have and be a waste of development money. There is a strong case for deferring the introduction of a new engine until the manufacturers are in a better position to fund its development. This would imply the use of an interim engine until at least 2013, as suggested in the note which was sent to you on 14 October.

Transmission

In order to achieve significant savings, there is a very strong financial case for a standard gearbox and an even stronger financial case for a ten-race standard gearbox with fixed ratios, serviced only by the supplier. We should like to discuss these possibilities with FOTA.

Complete power train

We are now confident that we will be able to source a power train (engine and complete transmission) which is visually, technically and audibly indistinguishable from the power trains currently in use, for significantly less than €10m per team per season. We would then be able to
offer each competing team three options:

(i) the FIA-sourced power train or

(ii) the right to build an engine identical to the FIA-sourced engine or

(iii) to continue with a current engine and to operate it within the constraints of the 2010 regulations.

An engine with less than current Formula One technology in combination with a ten-race gearbox would come in under the original €5 million budget. However, the attractions of continuing to use full current Formula One technology for less than €10 million are significant.

Chassis

We note the list of elements attached to your letter of 4 November, but I would reiterate the point made in my letter of 27 October (copy attached for convenience). A more rigorous analysis is needed in which every element of the chassis is looked at, so that a considered decision can be taken as to whether it should or should not remain a performance differentiator. Only by considering each individual element can a proper analysis of the chassis be made and a reasoned decision be taken as to what costs might be saved and in which way.

We are therefore going to revise the chassis rules for 2010. We would like to do this in consultation with FOTA. The plan is to make a list of every single chassis component and then, one by one, decide whether or not each component should be a performance differentiator. At present, virtually every component has an effect on performance even if only minimal. In today's ultra-competitive F1 this has led to vast sums of money being spent on items which make no difference to the appeal of F1 (because they are invisible to all except the team's own engineers) and contribute nothing to technology. This money is therefore being wasted. In the present economic climate, that cannot continue.