McLaren chief slams rival bosses

The need for cost-cutting measures has dominated paddock gossip for much of the year with many pushing for a testing ban as well as the single engine rule due for introduction in 2004.

Dennis said in Spain: "As far as people talking doom and gloom are concerned, if you want to talk down a share price it's one of the easiest things you can do.

"If you want to increase the problems the best thing you can do is to promote a crisis and whinge and moan about how difficult it is. This is a sport that has always required money. Every single team spends what it can afford, and how it spends it is its own affair."

Dennis said he considers the current economic downtown to be nothing more than a blip. "We have tracked the TV audience and everybody else who has a vested interest in the audience has done so very carefully. Undoubtedly there has been a blip in world sport among the viewing public. There is a percentage drop in all sport but F1 still holds it's own, it still carries a fascination.

"All the time that we get a TV audience the commercial variations in F1 are purely that - variations between supply and demand in the economic situation. We are all going to feel the need to cut our cloth. You don't have to go around shouting about it because it only makes things worse. Just get on, fix the problem, downscale your business if that's what's required and batten down the hatches because nobody's going to turn around with free handouts."

Dennis also denied that a testing ban would save money or even close up the field (for story, click here.)