Mercedes warns of F1 'arms race' if rules queries aren't clarified

Mercedes claims there are a number of ambiguities within appendices six (listed parts) and eight (ATR) of the current sporting regulations and wants clarification.

American team Haas is set to enter F1 next year and is doing so having secured a deal that means Ferrari supplies it with a number of parts as well as use of the Scuderia's windtunnel.

When asked if Formula 1 could be heading for an era where all the big teams have a junior team to speed up development, Mercedes chief Wolff said: "Yes

"This is the trigger of reorganising your structures to share ATR quota, to collaborate and educate personnel jointly and to share infrastructure.

"It would eventually be a situation where it could become an arms race of how many corporations or partners you could sign up in order to develop at the greatest speed."

The FIA carried out an inspection of Ferrari's windtunnel earlier this year to ensure its Haas tie-up complied with the regulations, which include a restriction on the number of hours a team can use the facility per week.

It found both were operating within the rules rather than Ferrari using Haas-allocated time for its own benefit.

Wolff insisted the request was not to do with another team's action but rather to help Mercedes plan its strategy.

"We haven't launched anything against a particular team, we haven't mentioned or referred to any particular team," he said.

"What we have done is seek from the FIA clarification to understand what you can do within the rules because we believe the rules in that particular area are a bit wide and a bit vague.

"We have pursued advice from the FIA for a while now, like many other teams, and the responses were equally vague because I think it's a difficult topic or the answer is not very simple.

"We don't want to go into unknown territory and launch ourselves in a project which could potentially be seen as not within the rules.

"We think a collaboration between Ferrari and Haas is within the rules and Ferrari has been given a carte blanche from the FIA.

"We are looking at 2016 and especially with consideration of 2017 where the car may be completely different with the scope of development we could be having with another team about sharing resources.

"We need to be understand what would be seen going forward acceptable or not."

RIVALS IN AGREEMENT

Williams performance chief Rob Smedley said every team is keen for the regulations to be clarified.

"All teams are interested in what is going on; everybody will be involved in it to a greater or lesser extent," said Smedley.

"Williams's position is that we would just like clarification.

"All the teams support that - even Ferrari would support clarification on that, so we can understand what to do in the future.

"Without [clarification], it opens up an awful lot of avenues in general and in spending."