Force India Breaks Away from FOTA, Lodges Unconditional Entry

Force India are likely to receive a FOTA suspension of their own during the upcoming weeks, as Vijay Mallya's outfit has officially lodged an “unconditional” entry for the 2010 Formula One Championship. Under the circumstances, the 9 teams threatening to leave the sport unless the budget cap rules will be scrapped have become eight.

The move was reported by Germany's Auto Motor und Sport on yesterday, who also suggested that Brawn GP are unlikely to defect, despite Ross Brawn's recent conflicts with the FOTA representatives. According to the German publication, the Brawn GP owner insisted the teams' association have done a great job creating a proper environment for cutting costs in the upcoming years and advised Mosley to consider their offer.

“The recent proposal of the teams makes a great many concessions to the FIA. The result would be the same as Mosley's budget limit,” argued Brawn.

So we're basically looking at the same set of rules – more or less, but leading to the same effect anyway – only proposed by two different parties. One of them is the FIA, traditional ruling body of the Formula One Championship, and the other is the FOTA, representative body for the F1 teams. If one should take up the other's offer, it would fall under the “loser” category in the public eye.

From the looks of it, this ongoing dispute between the two bodies is actually a battle of egoes between Max Mosley on one side, and Formula One historical team Ferrari. Although no meeting was scheduled between the FIA and the FOTA during the upcoming weekend, Domenicali was spotted entering the FIA motor-home on Thursday, to discuss the matter with FIA representative Alan Donnelly.

As for Force India's move, a similar policy adopted by Williams last week brought them a temporary suspension from the FOTA, as they broke the deal initially agreed upon by all the F1 teams (concerning the lodging of F1 entries).