19/06/2009
NEWS STORY
Max Mosley has accused the FOTA teams of posturing, while claiming that the current row will be resolved and that there will be no breakaway series.
At a time when many thought FOTA was losing ground, the teams' alliance confounded everyone by announcing that despite Mosley's threats it would be starting its own series. To add insult to injury, rather than to appearing to dance to Mosley's tune the teams announced their decision ahead of the FIA President's deadline.
Speaking to the BBC however, in the wake of the announcement that the FIA is to take legal action against the teams, Mosley claims that all will be sorted out eventually, dismissing the teams' threats, with customary arrogance.
"I don't take it as seriously as some people do because I know that it is all posturing and posing," he said. "It will all stop sometime between the beginning of 2010 and March 2010, the first race. All this will stop, it will all settle down and everyone will go racing."
Asked if he is confident that a solution will be found, the Englishman replied: "Absolutely. I am completely confident because in the end people do what it is in their interests to do. It is in the interests of the teams to be in the F1 World Championship and there is actually no fundamental or important issue that is stopping them taking part.
"It is all about personalities and power," he continued, "and who can grab what from whom, which is easy when nothing is at stake but when it gets to the first race and it is make your mind up time, they will be there."
Referring to the breakaway series, he said: "They can be very hard at the moment because it doesn't actually come to anything until March 2010. So we are nine months away. Everybody can posture and pose, but we all know that when it gets to Melbourne 2010 there will be a F1 World Championship and everyone who can be in it will be in it.
"Always with these things there is a compromise," he continued, "because they cannot afford not to run in the F1 world championship, and we would be very reluctant to have a Formula 1 World Championship without them, and I am talking about the eight teams there."
Despite his optimism that all will be resolved, however, he remains concerned that a number of the manufacturers will fall by the wayside in the not too distant future.
"I think some of them will disappear because some of the manufacturers will look at the amount of money being spent, the measures they are having to take within their companies, the people being laid off and accepting government money to keep going, and they are going to find it very difficult to keep pumping hundreds of millions into F1.
"So I think we will lose one or two or maybe three manufacturer teams, so we will need new teams to make up the space. But the great traditional teams, and I would include Ferrari in that, they need to be there and they will be there for sure. It will get sorted out."