Phoenix targets Monaco debut

While one leading team boss said at Imola: "I don't think they've got a snowball in hell's chance of getting an entry," Charles Nickerson, a long-time pal of Arrows boss Tom Walkinshaw, whose TWR organisation was to provide engineering support, is trying to establish the legal right to enter the championship.

Part of the machinations of the saga surround whether or not Nickerson bought the rights to the Prost Grand Prix name and hence the commercial benefits accruing to an organisation that finishes in the world championship top 10. There is understood to be around $12 million at stake.

"If a team dies, it dies," said a team principal at Imola. "It's not the same as a disqualification when those behind move up. It's history. Finished. If a gold medal winner gets knocked down by a bus, the guy who won the silver doesn't inherit his gold."

The sport's governing body, the FIA, is still adamant that the new team cannot race. President Max Mosley said at the San Marino Grand Prix: "It's quite simple. We believe that they don't have an entry but they are going to court in England to try to establish that they have. The case will be heard in the next few weeks."

Mosley denied that the governing body had attempted to deny Phoenix arbitration. "On the contrary," he said, "we are telling the English court that they should go to arbitration and not to court."