Cost-cutting: FIA had to act

Mosley believes that it is one thing for big teams to claim that money saved will be spent elsewhere, but the reality is that the back-end teams are under-funded to the tune of $20-30 million and something had to be done.

"When we lose two, three or four teams off the back of the grid, F1 is under threat," he said, "so the FIA had to see it coming and try to deal with it. We were concerned with the people missing those $20-30 million dollars. If you are spending that much more than you've got, you can't go on doing it for long.

"Our job is to keep F1 together. Everyone in the media knows that advertising revenue has dropped. It takes longer to filter through in Formula 1 because of the length of contracts, but don't be under any illusion, the money is going to go down. We have to keep an eye on it and the small teams rely on the governing body to create an environment in which they can survive."

Mosley also claimed that the decision to move drivers who blow engines back 10 places on the grid is not a cheap way to mix up the grid but a necessary consequence of the engine rules.

"If there's a rule saying just one engine what do you do if someone needs to use two? It's either a penalty or you stop them racing, which is clearly nonsense. The overwhelming majority of teams were in favour of moving back cars on the grid."