17/06/2009
NEWS STORY
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While many, when observing the current row between the FOTA teams and the FIA, feel they've seen it all before, some are of the opinion that this time it's different.
Last night we received an e-mail from a good friend of the Pitpass team, an F1 insider who has seen action with numerous teams at times when they employed the likes of Senna, Schumacher and Alonso.
"I have to say, it feels to me like the trajectory of all this is leading irrevocably to a parting of the ways," he wrote. "Considering today's lengthy FIA release and having read that tetchy exchange of letters between the legal eagles, it's difficult to see where there might be any common ground between the feuding parties.
"I wonder if there will be a British Grand Prix this weekend," he continues, "or indeed, whether the 2009 FIA Formula One World Championship will run its full 17 rounds."
With just a couple of days before the FIA's second deadline in as many weeks, and with the sport's governing body insisting that it will press ahead with the £40m budget cap in 2010, there are a growing number of fans and F1 insiders who feel, like our friend, that this time it's for real.
How ironic therefore, that the fate of F1, as we know it, might be decided this weekend at Silverstone, the circuit which hosted the first ever round of the Formula One World Championship, way back in 1950, and which itself looks set to disappear off the F1 map.
And as Ferrari prepares to head off along with the FOTA teams, let's not forget that it was at Silverstone in 1951 that Froilan Gonzalez scored the Maranello outfit's maiden Formula One Grand Prix victory.
All things considered, maybe Silverstone is the ideal place for F1, as we know it, to be finally laid to rest.