Teams pushing for changes to 2008 rules

Team managers from the teams met with the FIA on the eve of this weekend's race in Barcelona to discuss a range of issues, which included preliminary talks about the planned regulations that have been put forward by the FIA.

Now that the 2008 line-up of teams has been approved by the FIA, meetings are now talking place between the teams and the governing body in a bid to frame the rules before the June 30 deadline. They come after a series of meetings amongst the teams themselves to try and reach agreement on the way forward.

Although the provisional 2008 Sporting Regulations were approved by the FIA World Council in March, the message that came home from the teams during the meeting of the Sporting Working Group on Wednesday suggested that there was a desire for major alterations to be made to these proposals.

One source said that while there were pushes to make changes in a lot of areas, the major bone of contention remained the plans for an engine freeze.

BMW Motorsport Director Mario Theissen confirmed that there was a clear desire from the teams to incorporate some of their own ideas in the eventual 2008 regulations.

"The rules were discussed, the FIA brought it up to talk about and probably vote on the 2008 regulations," he told autosport.com. "But the team managers said, briefed by their technical directors, that there were several proposals under way, being prepared for the FIA on certain technical issues.

"The teams proposed to include these proposals in the decision-making process and then take it to the proper group - the Sporting Working Group is certainly not the forum for technical regulations."

When asked whether these proposals were radically different from what the FIA had suggested, Theissen said: "It is different, but in the view of the teams who worked it out jointly it serves the same purpose - the purpose of cost reduction."

The sporting regulations were published in March and included radical regulations such as an engine freeze for three years, revised penalties for engine or gearbox changes and parc ferme rules getting tightened up so cars cannot be worked on during any night of a Grand Prix.

The engine freeze concept has been debated at length by the sport's car manufacturers, some of whom are reluctant to accept the idea. One alternative being suggested is to limit the engines that teams would be allowed to use during the course of the season.

Honda's Otmar Szafnauer told autosport.com last month: "I think an ideal way of saving costs is to limit the number of engines we need to build. Engine costs money, that's obvious, and the bigger teams probably build around 200 engines a year.

"And if you limit the numbers of engines to say 40 or 50 for the season, and you use them as you wish for testing and racing, it will naturally bring about longer life engines so you can use them in testing, and it will definitely save money because you're only building 40 engines as opposed to the 200 you built in the past. And it is easy to police."