Reports are beginning to trickle out that there may have been a minor breakthrough in the whole F1 Budget Cap argument.  Ferrari and most of the other teams are expected to sign up for 2010, with a 100million Euro cap replacing the 40million proposed by Max Mosley.

I say "most of the other teams," as Williams has already signed up for the season (and gotten suspended from the Formula One Teams Association for doing so).  Toyota, however, is expected to announce that they are withdrawing from F1 at the end of this season.

The full participant list for the 2010 season is scheduled to be released June 12th.

More later as details come out.

UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, the media appears to have gotten it wrong.  All 10 current F1 teams, including Toyota, have been confirmed as being conditionally registered for next season.  The current agreement between FOTA and FIA (called "The Concorde Agreement") expires on June 12th, and it has to be resigned or the teams will withdraw en masse. 

The other condition is a bit more encouraging:

"The basis of the 2010 regulations will be the current 2009 regulations, amended in accordance with proposals that FOTA has submitted to the FIA.  All FOTA teams' entries for the 2010 FIA Formula One world championship have been submitted today on the understanding that (a) all FOTA teams will be permitted to compete during the 2010 Formula One season on an identical regulatory basis and (b) that they may only be accepted as a whole."

Meaning, of course, the rules won't change very much and there's a level playing field.  I sure can live with that, and obviously the teams can, too.

Now for the REALLY interesting stuff.  Along with the current 10 teams, there were four new teams applying to be on the grid:  the American team USF1, Prodrive (who was approved for the grid a couple of years ago, and may be running under the Aston Martin marque), Campos Racing (a Spanish Formula 3 team), and one of the legendary names from F1's past, Lola.

Now comes the June 12th deadline, when the FIA will announce which teams have been accepted for the grid.  Y'see, there's only 26 cars allowed... which means one of the new teams won't make the cut.  Unless they allow them all and the two slowest cars in quals aren't permitted to start!  Bring back the DNQ!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 12:17 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 404 words, total size 3 kb.

1 Wouldn't there also be a problem with space on pit row?

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 29, 2009 11:07 AM (+rSRq)

2 Steven, I have to admit that I didn't think of that. 

Now that I do, though, I think they'll have problems dealing with more than 10 teams at some tracks (I'm thinking Monaco in particular), but I'm assuming that the FIA must think it won't be a problem.

I know that most of the circuits host more races than just F1, and I'd assume that means they've got more pit stalls than just 10 teams/20 cars, but we've never seen them.

Anybody out there who's seen races at current F1 tracks, other than F1?  Can you give us some input?

Posted by: Wonderduck at May 29, 2009 11:20 AM (hlGBx)

3

Sorry about this, I'm testing to see if comments are still working here.

I can't get to anything on my blog any more, and I'm guessing that Pixy is porting mee.nu to the new hardware.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at May 29, 2009 08:10 PM (+rSRq)

4 Long time reader, first time commenter:

F1 has had more than 10 teams in the past. In 1994 they had 14 teams, and in 1992 they had 16 total, and Monaco that year had a full 32 drivers attempt to qualify. So unless the paddock cells have been increased in area within the past 17 years, which is possible, 14 teams shouldn't be too difficult to handle, even at Monaco. I just wonder if they'll keep the race field limited to 24 cars with 14 or more teams.

Posted by: John Smith at May 29, 2009 09:10 PM (WJqL4)

5 Hey there, not been by in a while, and your call to action brought me back over

When I went to Spa to watch my friend race, we were in the non-F1 pits. At that time, you had F1 pits alongside the start/finish straight, then another set around the corner for everyone else. I presume those were much smaller pit-boxes, so although they did have loads, there may not have been more than enough for more than 26 cars (although as has been said, there have been years of 32 cars. I think they had pre-qualifying then, so you may have been qualifying to get a pit stall in part).

This was before they changed the pits at Spa and put in that ultra-narrow pit-lane entrance, it's possible they have got rid of those non-F1 pits now.

Posted by: flotsky at June 01, 2009 02:20 AM (Rlr/x)

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