Head: no customer car constructors points

As the row over customer chassis continues to rumble on, Head has said that he hopes action is taken to sort the situation before a potential showdown at the Australian Grand Prix.

"We are running at the moment under the '98 Concorde Agreement, and it is absolutely plain and clear in there that each team has to be the designer and the constructor of their car," said Head.

"And no amount of smoke and mirrors, like inventing another company or handing the IP (intellectual property) around for a Euro or something, changes that.

"We race for a drivers' championship and also for a constructors' championship, and I don't really see how a team can compete and score points in a constructors' championship if they are not a constructor.

"The word constructor covers not just the manufacture of the car, but also the design and the IP that underpins that."

The Williams and Spyker teams are considering arbitration against Super Aguri and Toro Rosso over the matter, after attempts to resolve the situation in team principals' meetings have so far failed.

Offers for the teams in question to split their television rights revenue with Williams and Spyker have been rejected, although Head insists that there have to be doubts about whether Super Aguri or Toro Rosso would deserve to score points and therefore earn any television money.

But after team boss Frank Williams said at his team's 2007 car launch that he believed a compromise would be found, Head has said he is unsure about how the matter will be resolved - although hoped a deal could be reached.

He said he did not want the matter to get as far as injunctions being taken out in Melbourne to prevent both the teams in question from racing.

"There is quite a lot of strong feeling, even by the bigger teams, that they think that anybody competing in the world championship needs to be a constructor as under Schedule Three of the existing Concorde Agreement.

"But, as Frank says, I shall be surprised if it ends up with court hearings in Melbourne. So there will have to be a compromise somewhere.

"Toro Rosso or Super Aguri, if they do turn up with somebody else's car, and they are both claiming that they are not going to, but if they did you would hope that there would not be a situation where they are not actually allowed to race. Formula One needs every team."

Head also said that there remained some doubt about whether customer cars would be allowed from 2008, because the teams have not yet signed off approval in the new Concorde Agreement that will need to come into force.

"There is not a clear position. The 2008 technical regulations were stated by the FIA without discussion with the teams, but it's fully clear that there has to a be a new Concorde Agreement - and that we are told it has to be fixed by the middle of the year.

"The agreement we have signed with FOM says that the rules under which we will run from 2008 onwards will substantially be as per the 1998 Concorde Agreement."