“There Will Be No Split”: Mosley Claims F1 Agreement Reached

Max Mosley, the president of the FIA, has claimed that the disagreement between Formula One’s administrative body and FOTA – an association of teams most notably including Ferrari – is over. Eight of the ten F1 teams had threatened to form a breakaway series in 2010 if rules restricting their budgets had been introduced.

It seems that Mosley has been forced to back down from his argument that F1 teams would have to reduce spending significantly next year; now, he told journalists at a press conference today (24 June, 2009), “There will be one F1 championship but the objective is to get back to the spending levels of the early 90s within two years.”

Mosley also announced that he would not be standing for re-election for a fourth term as president when his current tenure ends in October. He claimed that he had not been forced out of his position, but was rather an arrangement made months ago: “My departure was planned, agreed, arranged – all the staff have known for months but obviously I couldn’t say it publicly because the moment you do you lose all your influence. Now I don’t need influence, it’s a satisfactory situation,” he concluded.

The announcement followed a meeting of the World Motorsport Council in Paris, which appears to have achieved what it set out to do: ended a tense stand-off between FOTA and the FIA. The head of FOTA and chief president of Ferrari, Luca di Montezemolo told the BBC that he was pleased the “important” decision had been reached. “It means that we have stability,” he said, suggesting that legal proceedings due to be started against the FOTA teams this week would not be going ahead.