Breakaway Series Ready to Publish Rules

The teams involved met at Munich last week to make further headway in their plans for the new series, and Williams technical director Sam Michael said proposals for technical and sporting rules were well advanced.

"The nine teams and five manufacturers have got together in technical meetings and we have drawn up a set of technical proposals which we will publish in August," he said at this weekend's British Grand Prix.

Although exactly how different the manufacturers' plans will be from the proposals put forward for F1, Michael has gone on to pour scorn on FIA president Max Mosley's mission statement that he wants to reduce downforce to just 10 percent of current levels in a bid to increase excitement.

Michael's comments come after a series of evaluation tests at Barcelona in Spain with cars running varying amount of downforce to evaluate its impact on the car.

"Do you really want 90 percent less downforce?" said Michael. "If we did that we would only have a third the grip of a 70's Formula One car.

"Why would you want to do that? We have series with different grip levels. Touring cars, IRL. We have to strike a balance that increases overtaking and controls speed and keeps F1 as the pinnacle of motorsport."