Well, the French court has said, "Non," to Ferrari's bid for an injunction on the FIA's rules for 2010. It is not quite as simple as that, however, as the decision agreed that the Italian team has a veto; the problem is that it was not used when the rules were published. Whether that means it is too late now to veto the rules is a moot point - it depends on the wording of the agreement which, of course, only the interested parties have seen. If I were Luca, I would give it a try anyway.
A sea of red - the tifosi
Predictably, the verdict has annoyed Ferrari somewhat and the team was somewhat dismissive when looking at the names of new teams lining up to enter F1. One can understand their disdain on reading the list:
Wirth Research, Lola, USF1, Epsilon Euskadi, RML, Formtech, Campos, iSport.
Wirth Research has nothing to do with Nick Wirth who was the man behind Simtek's brief appearance in F1 in the nineties - it is a research group that has done a lot of work in racing-related fields. It may be appropriate that their engineers should try their hand at the full product but one has to wonder where the funding would come from.
Lola and USF1 we know about, but Epsilon Euskadi is a Spanish racing team involved in the World Series by Renault and Le Mans until now. The owner, Joan Villadelprat, has an F1 background and a possible link with USF1 has been mentioned in the past. RML is Ray Mallock's racing group and has experience in many motor sports arenas, including Sports Cars, Touring Cars and Rallying. Formtech bought the Super Aguri assets and so at least has an old Arrows chassis and perhaps a duff Honda or two from which to start. Campos and iSport currently field GP2 entries.
Everyone has to start somewhere, I suppose, but I must admit that most of the names on the list seem very optimistic to me. USF1 has done enough to convince us of its intentions and was aiming at a much higher budget than Mosley's £40 million cap, so it could well put a car on the grid in Melbourne next year. Lola has tried so often before that they must surely know what they are getting themselves into. But the rest are making a huge jump and will struggle to build a car in time.
None of the new teams can hope to be sufficient recompense for losing Ferrari, Toyota, Red Bull and probably others from the entry list. At the very best, it would be several years before F1 could be taken seriously again. So Ferrari's gibe that the sport should be renamed GP3 is not far from the truth.
Naturally, the FIA has welcomed the court's decision and Mosley has replied to Ferrari's reaction with some insults of his own, suggesting that Maranello is putting its own interests above those of F1. It is hardly necessary to point out that it was Max who caused the whole furore by his high-handed introduction of the two-tier system and the budget cap; who then is endangering the future of the sport?
We should be grateful that the court phase of the battle is now over and all the parties are just going to have to sit down together to work out a solution. Max is not really known for making concessions and seems fairly adamant on the amount of the budget cap so Bernie will have to be pretty persuasive behind the scenes. No doubt everything will be settled in the end but it may take a bit longer than the legal proceedings.