F1 teams to meet Mosley again on Friday

Formula One teams will meet FIA president Max Mosley Friday with champions Ferrari and other manufacturers threatening to walk away from the sport at the end of the season.

The meeting, which team sources said would be on Renault team boss Flavio Briatore's luxury yacht at the Monaco Grand Prix, will be the second in eight days between the teams and head of the governing International Automobile Federation to try to resolve the crisis.

Friday is a rest day for the Formula One teams ahead of Sunday's race.

The teams, some of whom attempted to stage a walkout at the last meeting in London, face a May 29 deadline to sign up for the 2010 championship but Formula One's commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone doubted many would do so.

"We'll have to wait and see. I think the majority probably won't put an entry in," he told Reuters.

Toyota, champions Ferrari, Renault and the two Red Bull teams all say they cannot sign up for 2010 unless the regulations, which include an optional 40 million pound ($63.18 million) budget cap, are rewritten.

"There is a high probability that we won't enter before the deadline," Toyota motorsport president John Howett told Reuters.

"If nothing changes I don't think that professionally it is possible to commit the company to do that. I can't recommend that in my position."

FERRARI OPPOSITION

Although Mosley and Ecclestone have said they expect all teams to compete under the same regulations, the cap would give those teams accepting it greater technical freedom than others remaining on unrestricted budgets.

Ferrari say the budget cap and the sort of new entrants attracted by it would reduce Formula One, the pinnacle of motorsport, to the level of a junior series.

"If Formula One becomes Formula Three, we won't race," Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo said Thursday.

The Italian glamour team failed to secure an injunction in a French court Wednesday to stop the FIA introducing the changes.

Ecclestone said the situation worried him.

"We don't want to lose Ferrari," he said. "I hope it's unlikely. I am concerned, I don't want them leaving. I don't think anybody does."

Some of the team bosses, appearing at a news conference after practice, agreed.

"I think that all teams want to make sure that everybody remains in Formula One. I don't think anybody wants to see a team depart from Formula One, Ferrari included," said Force India's Vijay Mallya.

BMW-Sauber's Mario Theissen added: "I think we need to work out a solution. Formula One is a very strong brand, a very strong platform. The stakeholders are benefiting from it, so there is really no point in destroying that platform."