F1 organisers to blame for lost teams' - Ferrari

With Honda, BMW and Toyota all having pulled out of Formula One within the space of a year, Ferrari believes that fault for the departures lies with governing body the FIA as opposed to the parent companies of the car manufacturers or the global credit crunch.

'Formula One continues to lose major players: in the past twelve months, Honda, BMW, Bridgestone and Toyota have announced they are leaving the sport,' a Ferrari statement reads. In exchange, so to speak, we will now have Manor, Lotus (at least in name only, as this incarnation has little to do with the team that gave us Colin Chapman, Jim Clark and Ayrton Senna to name but a few,) USF1 and Campos Meta. Can we claim that it's a case of like for like, just because the numbers sitting around the table are the same?

Hardly - and we must also wait and see just how many of them will really be there on the grid for the first race of next season in Bahrain and how many will still be there at the end of 2010.'

With governing body the FIA having stressed that costs must be addressed urgently and effectively, Ferrari holds the opinion that strained relations between the groups in question is a more likely cause for the F1 splits.

'The reality is that this gradual defection from the F1 fold has more to do with a war waged against the major car manufacturers by those who managed Formula One over the past few years, than the result of any economic crisis,' Ferrari's message continues, adding that - in comparison to an Agatha Christie novel - '…the guilty party was only uncovered when all the other characters dies, one after the other. Do we want to wait for this to happen or do we want to pen a different ending to the book on Formula One?'

Source: gpupdate