Team Bosses Called for Crucial Meeting

Formula One teams may be forced to ditch controversial driver aids this season after the FIA revealed president Max Mosley will attempt to push through changes in a crisis meeting later this month.

Mosley will meet with team bosses on January 15th to discuss last-ditch plans to cut costs after being angered by their failure to solve their own financial problems in a private meeting last month. The team bosses decided that they could not make any major changes to the regulations until 2005 and went against Mosley's wishes by shelving plans to introduce significant cost reductions for the 2003 season.

Mosley is aiming to save the sport from collapse and believes the FIA can force the affluent teams to back down and allow outfits like Minardi and Jordan, who are not backed by a major manufacturer, to survive.

"It will be quite an important meeting and regulations for 2003 will feature significantly," said an FIA spokesperson. "There are definitely a lot of things to achieve."

The FIA met with the team chiefs at the Heathrow Hilton in London to thrash out changes to the sporting regulations at the end of October but left the teams to discuss the technical changes themselves.

At a meeting last month they managed to agree on just six minor cost-cutting items to pass on to the FIA for this season after failing to reach the unanimous agreement required to bring in any of the major proposals.

Mosley was believed to have left unhappy after their failure to admit to financial concerns, and a source close to the FIA said: "You cannot have that sort of meeting because these are very difficult economic situations.

"Some teams are spending incredible amounts of money while others are just staying on the grid. It needs to be stopped. The meeting at Heathrow over the sporting regulations was a good start, and this meeting is the next stage in that."

The Arrows team officially called in the receivers on Thursday and Mosley is concerned that interest levels in the sport will wane if the grid drops below the current 20 cars. It is understood that banning driver aids - like traction control and launch control - is just one of the things on the agenda and the FIA are confident they can force their plans through.

The expensive two-way telemetry systems, introduced last year, may also be dropped and sources at the FIA have suggested there is enough flexibility in the rules to introduce change without a unanimous vote.