From the Pulpit

So... Formula One's latest worst-kept secret has at last been announced: David Richards' Prodrive company has been chosen ahead of ten other applications to enter the 2008 FIA Formula One World Championship.

But what does that really mean? For, although Richards is an ambitious and successful man, and Prodrive is a successful and ambitious company, the three pillars upon which a new F1 team must be built are, as yet, apparently missing: a factory (although we've all seen Prodrive's plans for its Warwick site, and very nice they are, too), engines (although there's been talk of Cosworth) and sponsorship (no real rumours yet).

All one can therefore say with any certitude right now is that Prodrive may or may not field a team for 2008; 2008 is, after all, still some way off, and there's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip.

Besides, just as interesting as the news of Richards's success was what the FIA told us and what it didn't. There was something rather coy about the way Max Mosley's men spun their '2008-gate' tale, I thought - it was almost as though they knew it was a duffer but had decided to chance their arm, inch by inch, ready to pull back the moment anyone spotted the story for what it was.

Why was it a duffer? It was a duffer because only a handful of the ten disappointed consortia had an earthly chance of founding from scratch a new F1 team in time for 2008. Most of them, I gather, were not what you would call household names - not even in the most motorsport-obsessed households. And dark rumours persist that two of the disappointed men, Eddie Jordan and Craig Pollock, only put in applications because they were urged to do so by Mosley and/or Bernie Ecclestone.

Craig Pollock and Eddie Jordan © Reuters

Why would Mosley and Ecclestone do that? Because, ladeez 'n' gennelmen, '2008-gate' was yet another masterly bit of political brinkmanship engineered by Mosley, motivated by a desire to maintain stability (and therefore the status quo of Ecclestone's de facto ownership of F1), and should be viewed as little more than that.

You will remember that, prior to Mosley's then-astonishing suggestion that applications for 2008 would be required by the end of March 2006 (made, or rather hinted at, during his pre-season media lunches in London in mid-February), the rebel GPMA teams and manufacturers were still talking of inaugurating and participating in a rival series for 2008 - and some of them seemed pretty wedded to such a course of action, too.

Yet via the deceptively simple yet fantastically daring tactic of insisting that all 2008 entries be lodged now - in other words, long before entries will be required even for the 2007 FIA Formula One World Championship, which Jordan or Pollock or anyone else could still apply to enter as late as this autumn - Mosley forced the rebels to put up or shut up. Predictably, they shut up.

Crucial to Mosley's purpose was that 2008 must appear to be over-subscribed - and for two reasons:

(a) Because the directors of the current 11 teams, including those aligned to the GPMA, had to be convinced that there was a genuine risk that they might find themselves locked out of F1 if they failed to lodge their 2008 entries by Mosley's new deadline;

(b) A large number of 2008 entries could be spun as evidence that the motorsport world had had a good hard look at the FIA's back-to-basics 2008 F1 technical regulations, about which exciting rumours had been encouraged to circulate for some time and which were published on March 27 (ie, a few days before the 2008 entry deadline), and liked what it saw.

Mosley discussed point (a) during his mid-February media lunches, joshing with the press about how the selection process might be carried out and even laughing at jokes about the FIA adopting a selection process based on TV talent shows such as the X Factor.

As for point (b), well, I for one doubt that many of the 2008 applicants, other than the existing 11 teams and perhaps a couple of others, paid much more than the most cursory attention to such minutiae as "camshaft profiles" and "valve actuation kinematics", to cite but two exciting new developments trumpeted by the FIA in its March 27 announcement.

(I haven't actually asked Jordan what he thinks of the FIA's new policy on camshaft profiles and valve actuation kinematics - because I'm utterly certain he hasn't given them a moment's thought. Neither, I'm sure, has Pollock.)

But new names, household ones, will enter F1 one day - indeed, some of them may even compete in 2008, '2008-gate' notwithstanding. Confused? Okay, tell me this: where was Roger Penske's 2008 application, which we had been led to believe (not by Penske) might be forthcoming? Nowhere, that's where. And the reason for that is, as I said earlier, that 2008 is still some way off, and there's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip.

Ron Dennis and Roger Penske © Reuters

If Penske - whose F1 entry, if it comes, would be a genuinely exciting development - were to enter F1, he would do what anyone who really understands F1 knows you have to do: talk to Ecclestone. That's what Super Aguri did last year; that's what Midland did the year before; that's what Toyota did in 2000; that's what British American Tobacco did in 1998.

Various different routes were found that led to their arrival in F1 - some (Toyota, Super Aguri) founded new teams, others (BAT, Midland) bought existing ones - but a way was found. Because where there's a will there's a way - and, when genuinely prestigious and/or wealthy newcomers express a genuine wish to enter Ecclestone's private club, there's always a will.

And therefore a way. And there remains one glaringly obvious way via which any genuinely prestigious and/or wealthy newcomer can and will enter F1, and that's by taking over Renault's Enstone operation when Renault finally decide that enough success really is enough. And that decision will come one day, probably before 2008, because Renault has always come and gone in F1 and will continue to do so.

And then Hyundai or Daihatsu or Volkswagen or Penske or even Michael Schumacher or whoever else you care to name will take over a ready-made front-of-the-grid team, without having to be a bit-player in Mosley's ingenious '2008-gate' charade, without having to show their hand to you and me as early as March 2006, and still be on the grid in 2008.

The conversations are doubtless already taking place behind the smoked glass frontage of Prince's Gate.