Richards Encouraged after Cost-Cutting Discussion

British American Racing boss David Richards praised his fellow team chiefs for a "great meeting" after completing a three-hour discussion on the future of Formula One in the A1-Ring paddock.

Richards, who took over the reigns at BAR at the end of last year, was joined by the other Grand Prix team principals and Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone, but said an agreement had been made not to discuss specifics of the meeting.

He did, however, insist that the sport is not in as bad a shape as some other team bosses claim, and revealed the meeting had seen positive steps made towards a solution.

"It was a general discussion and we will meet again, probably in the next fortnight," said Richards. "We should all be talking the sport up not thinking doom and gloom. There are one or two people in the paddock who are looking at their own circumstances, but it is not about cost cutting, it is about making the sport better value for everybody.

"It is very easy to portray something as a negative when only a very slight shift makes it become a positive. It is not like the situation in football at the moment - who would want to be in that?"

After hearing Minardi boss Paul Stoddart's suggestions that he will quit the sport if he does not get a budget that was sufficient to be competitive next year, Richards admitted the paddock felt sympathy for the Australian businessman.

But he warned Stoddart that there will never be a solution to limiting the budgets of the big teams, and that the aim of the talks are to ensure the smaller teams do not fall too far behind the leading runners.

"Everyone shares sympathy for Paul's situation," he said. "I am sure the likes of Ron Dennis and Frank Williams have been there themselves. You do get very depressed and it is hard work at the back of the grid.

"But there are only a number of things we can do. We can never cut costs because the teams will just re-distribute the expense. Top teams cannot change their budgets, but there are certain thresholds that you cannot operate below and we want to make sure the smaller teams can compete viably."