A political storm is brewing ahead of Monday’s London meeting of the new F1 rule-making Strategy Group.<\/p>\n
The new body has effectively replaced the old sporting and technical working groups, but it includes only the most powerful and historic F1 teams — Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes, Williams and Lotus.<\/p>\n
According to Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport, on the agenda for Monday’s meeting is what constitutes a ‘customer car’.<\/p>\n
If the definition is softened, some of F1’s smaller constructors could be endangered as the big teams look to sell their cars to potentially more competitive rival teams.<\/p>\n
Force India’s Bob Fernley, whose Silverstone based team has 62 points in 2013 compared to Williams’ 1, told the Telegraph that the new body is “unethical and undemocratic”.<\/p>\n
Auto Motor und Sport said the FIA is, however, comfortable with the Strategy Group, because rule-changes would still need to be approved by the F1 Commission.<\/p>\n
But one paddock voice said F1 chief executive Bernie Ecclestone has indeed manoeuvred an unfair advantage, because the big teams are generally on his side.<\/p>\n
Other rumours suggest the Strategy Group might not even pass the scrutiny of the EU’s competition laws.<\/p>\n
“Perhaps,” former FIA president Max Mosley is quoted as saying.<\/p>\n
“To my knowledge, Mercedes has sought legal advice and the answer was that it (the group) is contestable.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A political storm is brewing ahead of Monday’s London meeting of the new F1 rule-making Strategy Group. The new body has effectively replaced the old sporting and technical working groups, but it includes only the most powerful and historic F1 teams — Ferrari, Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes, Williams and Lotus. According to Germany’s Auto Motor …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[128,5262,4689,93,5300,5340,60,283,5284,8,129,155],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19636"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19636"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19637,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19636\/revisions\/19637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}