F1 teams agree to reduce engine costs

SCARPERIA, ITALY // Formula One teams have unanimously agreed to reduce engine costs by more than €15 million (Dh70m) by 2011. The Ferrari chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo presided over a meeting of the newly founded Formula One Teams Association (FOTA). The organisation decided that in the current economic climate that it would be wise to bring the costs of running a team down. "We are working with all the teams to reduce costs even more for 2010 and 2011," Montezemolo said at Ferrari's end-of-season celebration. "We unanimously decided that by 2011 an engine will cost €5m, compared to the more than €20m they used to cost."

The Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), the governing body for Formula One, recently announced it was moving forward with plans to have a sole engine and transmission supplier beginning in 2010, a move which prompted Ferrari to threaten pulling out of the sport if the plans went ahead. Ferrari believes that the move would eliminate the essence of a sport based on competition and technological development. "It's unthinkable that constructors like Ferrari, Toyota, Mercedes, Honda, Renault and BMW would accept putting their label on a machine with an engine made by someone else," Montezemolo said. "The purpose of F1 is that investments in innovation, research and development reverberate in industrial production."

*AP