Brawn GP and BMW Keep Quiet Over FIA Deadline

Brawn GP and BMW Sauber are so far keeping quiet about their plans to (not) file an application for a 2010 Formula One entry by the May 29 deadline imposed by the FIA. As revealed by officials from both teams, the outfits will fail until the next Formula One Teams Association meeting this weekend to decide their future actions in the series.

The FOTA members are to meet on Friday, at Monaco, to discuss a potential alternative to the 40M budget cap introduced by the FIA in the 2010 rule book. Based on the outcome of this week's discussions – and the feedback from the FIA – the F1 teams will decide whether they'll enter next year's championship or not.

“We will discuss it then and not make any statements beforehand. I would say we need to be positive and we need to be confident and we need to push to get an agreement because it doesn't make sense for any of the stakeholders to damage the platform we have,” said BMW Motorsport Director Mario Theissen ahead of the Monaco meeting.

Ross Brawn, a feverish supporter of budget caps in Formula One (ever since he's been a team owner, at least) insisted that the measure should not come at the expense of historical teams leaving the sport. Brawn's most successful years in F1 happened when he was technical head of Ferrari.

“I don't want to comment on that particular point yet, because of the discussions going on. We as a team always supported the idea of the budget cap, but what we don't want is a budget cap that forces other teams to leave formula one,” said the Englishman in an interview with F1's official site.

BMW are believed to choose in favor of withdrawing from the sport at the end of the year, if the FIA does not revise the budget cap proposal. Theissen announced this earlier this month, as it's no surprise the German manufacturer doesn't find a financial-limited racing series attractive anymore.