Stoddart Still Hopeful on 'Fighting Fund'

Team boss Paul Stoddart has revealed the future of his Minardi team will remain in doubt unless rival team bosses agree to form a 'fighting fund' to help out back-of-the-grid squads.

Stoddart is hoping a meeting between the teams and the sport's governing body, the FIA, on April 11 will result in the fund being established to help him and Formula One's other financially-stretched teams.

"We are obviously hopeful that something will come out of the meeting," Stoddart said. "It's not a great secret we're not finding it easy. But I'm sure that what was said on January 15 where it was publicly announced that there would be some form of fighting fund, I think there are still a lot of people committed to that."

The fund was initially set up in January to help ease the financial strain on the smaller teams with Bernie Ecclestone and Formula One's front running teams making money available. The step was taken after both Prost and Arrows disappeared from the grid in the space of 12 months to leave the minimum 10 teams on the grid, with Minardi and Jordan also fighting for their future.

But Stoddart is hopeful that positive discussions on April 11 will end the uncertainty surrounding the future of his team.

"The fighting fund was originally designed to ease the pressure on Jordan and Minardi's engine bills and that I still believe is the primary aim of the fighting fund," he added.

"One can argue what the figure should be, but at the moment these funds are specifically unallocated. It could be that perhaps that forms the basis of a fighting fund, there could be contributions from the other teams.

"These are issues that we've got to discuss and, hopefully, find a positive way forward so that we can maintain and keep 10 healthy teams in Formula One. We've done so much over the winter to improve the spectacle of Formula One, to make it a much more interesting sport, to address the criticisms that we took last year.

"We've acted and reacted to them and we've got what I believe is a much more exciting Formula One. I don't want, with all the work we've done, more stories about teams going bust again. I think Formula One needs to have a year just talking and concentrating on the racing."

Stoddart admits that without the fighting fund he faces a repeat of 2002, when he had to find funds race-by-race to keep Minardi on the grid - and more importantly develop the team's car. The Australian aviation tycoon, who took over the Anglo-Italian team at the start of the 2001 season, admits he wants to avoid another struggle.

"What you will see if things stay as they are now is that we will go through the rest of the year absolutely bloody struggling from race to race," he said. "That should not be confused with will we be here, because yes, we will be here, but Formula One is a new race every two weeks.

"We started the season with an absolutely fantastic reliability record - we were running second at one point, and certainly third for the first half of the season. But then we slipped away and lost it towards the rear of the season because we simply didn't have the budget to actually keep developing the car.

"While it's one budget to compete and complete there's another budget to progress and develop."