Focus: Minardi, Money on the Menu at F1 Meeting

Minardi hope to secure their immediate Formula One future at a meeting of team bosses on Thursday but the indications are that they could be disappointed.

Minardi owner Paul Stoddart said at the Canadian Grand Prix last weekend that he hoped the talks, primarily to discuss a range of issues including proposed engine rule changes, would help resolve the team's funding shortfall.

Stoddart wants television revenues, around $12 million according to Formula One sources, that would have gone to the defunct Prost team and was busy canvassing fellow bosses in Montreal. Prost finished ninth last season while Minardi were 11th and last. Only the top 10 teams get television money.

"Hopefully we can resolve it once and for all at the meeting in London," said Stoddart. "I think it will be solved on Thursday but I've stopped making predictions because when you think something is right both legally and morally it doesn't seem to carry a lot of weight."

Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone and International Automobile Federation (FIA) president Max Mosley, who have both warned that one or two teams risk following Prost into bankruptcy, will attend the closed meeting in London.

Minardi are unlikely to be a top priority for the big teams, more concerned with proposals to limit them to one engine per car per weekend from 2004, but the debate has important repercussions.

Stoddart, who rescued Minardi in January last year when they were on the brink of collapse, has said he is unwilling to bale the team out indefinitely and has already budgeted for the missing Prost millions.

While the Australian-born businessman has said there is no danger of Minardi missing the next race at the Nurburgring on June 23, there is a risk of them failing to finish the season.

Opposing Views

While many are sympathetic to his plight, with Minardi a popular team among fans for their ability to compete against all the odds, some principals oppose their stance. Arrows boss Tom Walkinshaw, whose team have also been seen as vulnerable to the economic downturn, is one and McLaren's Ron Dennis also made his position clear at the weekend.

"There is a quantity of teams, and I am most firmly in that camp, who do believe strongly that Minardi has no legal right to the funds that they claim they have rights to," he told reporters in Montreal.

"Their argument is made on the basis that because Prost is not competing, there is the promotion from 11th to 10th and that ninth doesn't exist," said Dennis. He likened the situation to the bronze medalist in an athletics race dying after the event: "He still won the bronze medal. It doesn't mean everybody moves up."

"It is the nub of the issue," added Dennis. "There's going to be a room in which all the team principals sit with Max and Bernie. We will discuss a range of issues and that will probably be one of them.

"The fact that we are all together helps but I don't think it's going to change the facts of the matter."