Mosley Offers Radical New Rules to Cut Down Costs

Formula One's top teams are expected to begin their battle to beat the recession by adopting new rules restricting them to only one engine, per car, per weekend - starting next year.

Max Mosley, the president of the sport's ruling body, the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) told reporters on Thursday that it was the FIA's job to protect the sport.

"We need to do something, we are discussing it with the teams and they are mostly in favour," he said. "The earliest we can do this will be 2003 provided we reach an agreement on this before October."

The FIA, he said, was acting to cut costs in the sport in the wake of last week's news from Paris that the Prost team had been declared bankrupt by a French court. Mosley said it was essential that something is done to cut the costs for the 11 remaining Grand Prix teams and to preserve the sport for the future.

He said it would be necessary for the teams to use engines designed to run for 800 kilometres instead of 350 and he suggested any driver suffering an engine failure in qualifying would automatically be penalised by being forced to start the race from the back of the grid. If a driver suffers an engine failure during a race, he would, of course, be out.

"I imagine it will be one engine per car per weekend," said Mosley. "When it has been raining in the past, and there has been an unexpected grid it has led to an exciting race."

Mosley said the manufacturers all wanted to save money but did not wish to lose their investment in newly developed technology being introduced this year. He said there had been great interest from manufacturers contemplating replacing the bankrupt Prost team as the 12th entry for this year's Championship.

He said it remained possible for a manufacturer or other interested parties to take over the Prost team's entry for the championship because the French team has paid already the 48 million dollars entry fee for the series.

"If that happens, we would give it back to them in instalments from the first race onwards," Mosley said. "Yes there has been a lot of interest, but I don't expect anything to happen imminently.

"We do not usually want to interfere as a ruling body, but it is our job to defend and protect motorsport and it is our duty to solve these kind of problems."

Mosley said it was a matter of "when and not if" the engine restriction regulation would be introduced. It is believed such a move could save some teams more than £15 million per season and add more unpredictability to the racing.

Some observers, however, warned that such a move would encourage the top teams to invest in research and development programmes to create durable high speed power units instead of short time distance sprint engines. Mosley added also that he was not aware of any other team facing imminent bankruptcy as they struggle to raise the necessary budget for a competitive season in Formula One.

"If there are any," he said, "they will keep quiet, I suppose, or else their creditors will start pressing."

Contemplating the future of the sport, Mosley was equivocal about the reported interest of media mogul Rupert Murdoch taking over the massive investment made by the German television group Kirch.

But he conceded that if the Australian owner of Sky Television did take control, they "would do our best to work with him - we want a successful Championship after all. I don't think there should be any great difficulty."

He added also that he felt Moscow was the leading contender for a place on the Formula One calendar in the future and that Turkey was another serious candidate.

"I think there will be a general shift to the Middle East and Far East and that China and India are obviously very interesting candidates for the future. If we had got India and China, we would have half the world population or something like it."