It was, as Frank Williams indicated, basically inevitable. On Monday the team announced that it had lodged its entry for the 2010 season. Today the team announced that it was being kicked out of the Formula One Teams Association as a result of breaking ranks with the other nine teams in their face off with the International Automobile Federation over next year’s F1 rules.
“Following Monday’s confirmation that the team has submitted its formal entry for the 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship, the Formula One Teams Association has today decided temporarily to suspend Williams F1 from membership of FOTA,” the team said in a statement.
“FOTA’s decision, although regrettable, is understandable,” said Frank Williams, the team principal. “However, as a racing team and a company whose only business is Formula One, with obligations to our partners and our employees, submitting our entry to next year’s Championship was unquestionable. In addition, we are legally obliged under our contract with FOM and the FIA to participate in the World Championship until the end of 2012.”
I was tempted in the headline of this blog post to quote lines from the Bob Dylan song: “The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast…the slow one now will later be fast….” But I have a feeling I might already have quoted those lines from “The Times They Are a Changin’” before. Still, are they not appropriate? Williams’ move is the first to really weaken and break up the nearly unprecedented agreement amongst the teams to all stick together. And if the series were to lose some of the other top teams, Williams would be the best positioned to win the title again.
Who will now follow the Williams - temporary - exit from the FOTA? And what will be the effect? Obviously, it can go only two ways: Either this victory for the FIA and FOM in dividing and thereby weakening the teams will lead to the withdrawal of Ferrari and the other teams that have threatened to withdraw, or it is yet another step toward an eventual compromise. With new teams like USF1 coming in to the sport, and an old team like Williams, confirming it will return, Ferrari, Toyota and the others will see that there WILL be an F1 series next year. And they may therefore decide that they want to be part of it, even if the rules are not entirely to their liking. A compromise.
For me, the most important thing here however is for the FIA and FOM to see that what is more important than their political agenda and the victory off track against the teams, is that Formula One remain the motor racing series at the pinnacle of technology. And above all, that they realize that the desire of the fans is what counts most of all. And if the series is crippled by a two-tier rules system with some teams having a huge technical advantage over others, then they will no longer be interested.
It is interesting how as Ferrari has suddenly grown further from the FIA, Williams has grown much closer. It even provides the chassis to the new FIA F2 series.
Comente