Teams to seek 2010 calendar talks

Formula 1 teams are to seek talks with the sport's commercial boss Bernie Ecclestone to try and reshuffle next year's calendar because of concerns about travel arrangements, AUTOSPORT has learned

The FIA announced a provisional version of the calendar following last week's hearing of the World Motor Sport Council in Paris.

Although most of the 19-race schedule, which begins in Bahrain on March 14 is acceptable, there has been some worry about the logistics of some of the events - and especially having the Turkish Grand Prix on May 30, just one week after Monaco.

Shipping the cars by either boat or road over back-to-back weekends will be especially tough - and the option of turning Turkey into a 'flyaway' event would then have repercussions on the following proper flyaway in Canada.

Toyota F1 president John Howett told AUTOSPORT that the matter of the calendar would be discussion during a meeting of the Formula One Teams' Association (FOTA) ahead of the Singapore Grand Prix.

"There needs to be further outline discussions on the additional race," explained Howett. "We need to understand what is envisaged, because logistically there are some challenges that need a major change.

"If you made Turkey a flyaway, you are then struggling with a flyaway to Montreal. There are some issues that we need practically to resolve."

The Montreal event has been provisionally scheduled for June 13, pending the completion of a contract with Formula One Management. Should those discussions not be successful, then the Monaco/Turkey problem would be resolved, because Istanbul would move back to the slot currently held by Canada.

The FOTA meeting in Singapore is also due to include discussions about the future of KERS, with Williams vowing to continue development of the technology, and the sorting out of more details regarding the Resource Restriction Agreement.