Mosley may abandon cost cuts

Mosley argued that the boycotting of last month's Heathrow meeting by all bar Ferrari, combined with the buy-outs of Jaguar and Jordan by Red Bull and Midland respectively, suggested that there was no longer either a desire or a requirement for the cost cutting debate to continue.

"Had the teams been interested in the general question of costs, they would have come to the meeting of 28 January," he wrote. "Subsequent to my fax of 2 February to all the teams, Charlie Whiting chaired a meeting of the Formula 1 team managers on 3 February and a Technical Working Group meeting on 4 February.

"These latter two meetings, but particularly the TWG meeting, have made it clear that the teams which failed to attend the 28 January meeting did so because they do not wish to discuss cost reduction with the FIA.

"This is perhaps understandable, because the two teams whose future appeared most under threat at the end of last season have fortunately now been taken over by organisations which are reputed to have very significant financial resources. This may be the reason why most teams seem unconcerned either by current costs or even by future probable costs.

"There are now those in the FIA who question whether further time and effort should be expended in seeking cost reduction in Formula 1. The matter will be discussed by the World Motor Sport Council next month and may well result in the abandonment of these efforts unless or until there is a financial crisis in Formula 1 of the kind which appeared imminent last autumn."

The main body of the fax was a vehement rebuttal of Stoddart's suggestion that Mosley's measures - particularly his desire to reduce engine capacity - were being enforced contrary to the requests of the TWG, and in contravention of the Concorde Agreement. The Minardi team owner had also argued that all the time the tyre war was allowed to continue, any other attempts to reduce speeds and/or cut costs would be largely futile.

Mosley attacked Stoddart in his reply, and refuted his suggestions:

"You are extremely fortunate to have time for this. In fact, I suspect you have a ghost writer, because slightly pompous legalise is not your usual style," wrote Mosley in the opening paragraph of the fax.

In reference to the debate over engine capacity, Mosley wrote:

"All the team technical directors had repeatedly called for a reduction in power. Had the FIA ignored this and had there then been a serious accident, the FIA would have been in a very difficult position in any subsequent judicial enquiry.

"Quite plainly 1000bhp engines in a system intended for 700bhp would have presented an increased risk. When this obvious fact is combined with repeated requests from the entire TWG, it would have been madness for the FIA not to act.

"The truth is that a single control tyre with no other changes would not have been enough to contain car performance, if only because of the maximum speeds achievable with over 1000bhp."