Exactly what has Ferrari and Red Bull signed up to?

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Originally Posted by Dave Brockman

Court ruling or no court ruling, they can't be forced to race if they really don't want to.

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Max will pull out his whip and shout, "Race, damn you, race!" :)

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Originally Posted by MDS

Does the contract specify the level of participation that Ferrari and Red Bull have to compete at? Wouldn't it be possible for them to put a shell team out there with a two young drivers and essentially run it as an after thought while they put all of their effort into the FOTA program? My bet it is it requires they field a team, but there probably isn't a minimum dollar amount behind that.

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The perfect way to run a test team!

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Originally Posted by tamburello

They can if they are sued by FOM/CVC. FOM/CVC can look for fiscal damages for loss of income from the FIA, and the FIA can then sue Ferrari for causing that loss of income.

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CVC may be able to sue individual teams but the FIA has no financial arrangement apart from what is agreed within the rules. Max believes his own hype and thinks he actually runs F1.

The only person that runs F1 is Bernie and Max is in charge of the rules and like he rightly said, if the teams want to fcuk off and set up their own series, there's sod all he can do about it.

Now, Big Bernie is a different matter and he has been sitting back and watching the pissing contest. I get the feeling that he will deliver a blow when he's ready and it will be decisive. It will happen and F1 will shake.

This will be over when he makes a decision.

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Originally Posted by tamburello

They can if they are sued by FOM/CVC. FOM/CVC can look for fiscal damages for loss of income from the FIA, and the FIA can then sue Ferrari for causing that loss of income.

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Even after Max publicly stated that F1 doesn't need Ferrari?!
Talk about shooting himself in both feet.

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Originally Posted by Knock-on

The only person that runs F1 is Bernie and Max is in charge of the rules and like he rightly said, if the teams want to fcuk off and set up their own series, there's sod all he can do about it.

Now, Big Bernie is a different matter and he has been sitting back and watching the pissing contest. I get the feeling that he will deliver a blow when he's ready and it will be decisive. It will happen and F1 will shake.

This will be over when he makes a decision.

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It looks to me that Bernie is lost in this war. The events just went by to fast and I think he is relying totally on Max to clean up the mess, and his comments yesterday were pointing exactly to that.

Which just goes to show how little you understand the mascinations and politics of F1 :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by Knock-on

CVC may be able to sue individual teams but the FIA has no financial arrangement apart from what is agreed within the rules.

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The FIA have no direct financial arrangement with the teams, true, but, and not for the first time I'll point this out because apparently its something none of you really want to hear, if the actions of the teams cause financial loss to the FIA's associates (FOM/CVC through contractual obligations) then the teams can be sued....by the FIA as well as directly by CVC.

It may not go in their favour, but if a court decided that the FIA & FOM/CVC had a case, then due to the amounts of money involved Ferrari won't have enough money left to cut the grass at Fiorano, let alone form a breakaway series.

If it goes to court, I'll happily wager that the FIA win. When he's in court, Max is really quite good.....certainly better than the Ferrari lawyer.

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Originally Posted by tamburello

The FIA have no direct financial arrangement with the teams, true, but, and not for the first time I'll point this out because apparently its something none of you really want to hear, if the actions of the teams cause financial loss to the FIA's associates (FOM/CVC through contractual obligations) then the teams can be sued....by the FIA as well as directly by CVC.

It may not go in their favour, but if a court decided that the FIA & FOM/CVC had a case, then due to the amounts of money involved Ferrari won't have enough money left to cut the grass at Fiorano, let alone form a breakaway series.

If it goes to court, I'll happily wager that the FIA win. When he's in court, Max is really quite good.....certainly better than the Ferrari lawyer.

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The FIA would need fairly iron clad contracts to be able to recoup money from the teams. If it came to that point the teams could dummy up a team and call it their F1 team and race.

You're including a lot of big "ifs" for contracts we haven't seen the details of. I'm sure every team consulted with their legal teams before taking the actions they did. Considering the strength of FOTA I wouldn't say Max would have the upper hand, they have a lot of financial strength behind them.

It would be very difficult to prove future revenues of the series if none of this had taken place. Even then FOTA could put the issues back into the lap of the FIA, as it was rules changes that caused the entire issue to begin with.

I agree airshifter.

There will be some teams that have signed up to race such as FI. They will be in trouble if they leave the series without just cause such as the obligations of the contract not being met.

If no contract with the rest of the teams exist, then the FIA have no claim on them whatsoever and have no grounds to sue.

It would be like the Rose and Crown sueing me because I decided their beer was crap and moved my custom to the White Hart.

And I repeat, I am not talking about FOTA teams, just the ones allegedly with an FIA contract until 2012.