Talk Steer: Tony Dodgins on...

Saturday morning, Barcelona. F1 team principals are locked in earnest discussion around a Toyota motorhome table. Something seems to be eating Ron Dennis and Bernie Ecclestone particularly.

Rumours fly. Everything from a proposal that recommends Mr Mosley resigns, to a meeting to discuss the binning of Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) due for introduction in F1 next year.

McLaren supremo Dennis was not about to open his mouth about the FIA president but he was happy to set the record straight on KERS.

"I didn't get heated, I got passionate," he explained. "It was a meeting about costs. It was called to determine the future development of KERS and, obviously, not everyone agreed..."

Toyota had wanted to discuss the safety implications, something Luca Marmorini explained to me in Bahrain.

"You can have a 40,000rpm mechanical flywheel and that is quite a dangerous device on a car," he said. "In the same way, you might have huge voltage and so anybody working on the car needs to be trained in a completely different way.

"In the event of a small crash you need lots of safety switches so that FIA marshals can touch it. That is priority number one for Toyota. These things are not purely performance issues. In F1 the amount of room is so small and narrow and so much more extreme an environment than with a road car."

Not all motives were so honourable. At least one team boss believed that if Max is bowled over on June 3, then KERS might just go with him. More prevalent though, was a desire to see some of the more involved - and expensive - KERS initiatives, loosely targeted for 2011 and 2013, deferred until there is deeper understanding.

But, as Paul Stoddart is fond of saying, such is the diversity of vested interest in an F1 TP meeting, there's more chance of a knighthood than a common thread.

Williams, allegedly, believes that its partnership with electrical giant Philips could afford it an advantage when it comes to KERS and thus is not keen on any deferral. Despite being a privateer team at a time when some of the manufacturers are talking about a £25million basic KERS development cost.

"What I find particularly frustrating," Dennis went on, "is that a lot of people who were there were not the people who sign the cheques, so I was keen to make very clear the consequences of us not finding a constructive way forward. I voiced my opinion about that."

But, apparently, he did so in a manner that caused some to take offence.

In our world, people are being asked to return credit cards, mortgages are scarce and you can't turn on the TV or open a paper without credit crunch news. In the business world, people who know say that while money was freeflowing a couple of years ago, banks won't lend significant money without syndicating a debt. And it's going to get tougher. Looking at the big picture, is this the right time to be saddling yourself with KERS development?

Or, do you look at the big, big picture and say that if F1 does a U-turn on its green initiatives, it is ultimately sunk? I've got to admit, I'm all for limiting KERS to the basic systems introduced next year, which will provide an additional 80bhp for around 6.5 seconds. It's not mandatory, remember, and some designers have suggested that 40kg less weight would actually be preferable to the extra grunt.

Top teams, though, will have to go the KERS route. Although estimates suggest that KERS will give you only between 0.1-0.3sec per lap, it will facilitate overtaking. And can you imagine the FIA permitting a situation whereby a car is quicker without it?

But, whisper it, there is apparently such limited technology crossover between road and race car applications that if it's the Eco PR you want, put the simple systems on and leave it at that. I don't want to see grands prix decided by electrical software systems. We've just taken steps to get away from that.

There are enough significant performance variables being introduced next year that perhaps we should focus on the little picture - motor racing - once in a while. In Q2 in Spain, fourth through to 12th was covered by three tenths and 1.14sec covered first to 16th. Engineers love challenges and do we really want to mess with that?

Why was Bernie cheesed off? If he got back all his wasted time refereeing TP squabbles, he'd still be in his 50s....