FIA president Jean Todt has confirmed that Formula 1 teams are now allowed to miss up to three grands prix without penalty, as doubts persist over whether US F1 and Campos will be ready to start their debut seasons.
F1 impresario Bernie Ecclestone has stated on several occasions in recent months that he expects neither of the teams to be on the grid for the first race of 2010 in Bahrain on March 14 and predicted last weekend that both would ask to miss the opening three races – an option he says was now open under the terms of the latest Concorde Agreement.
Todt has now confirmed that teams would be allowed to skip three events – in any order – before they faced sanctions, which means US F1 and Campos would have the option of sitting out the first three races before joining the grid in China in mid-April should they need more time to get their teams in order.
"At the last session of the World Council the possibility of a team not participating in three races was endorsed, even if they were not consecutive races,” Todt was quoted as saying by Italy’s Gazzetta dello Sport.
Although both US F1 and Campos have publicly insisted on several occasions they will be ready to take up their respective place on the grid, the Serbian-backed Stefan GP outfit has been pushing ahead with plans to join the field should either of the confirmed teams’ plans fall through and says it has already shipped equipment to Bahrain.
Todt, however, has made it clear that even one of the 13 grid places becomes available there is no guarantee the spot will be filled.
“But if a team withdraws from the entire championship, a new team will not be introduced automatically,” the Frenchman added.
“It's always up to the FIA to decide if a team meets the requirements or not."
The Frenchman’s predecessor as FIA president, Max Mosley, used much of his final year in office to try and push through his controversial budget cap idea in a bid to cut costs and entice new teams into the sport, before a deal with teams was eventually reached on the Resource Restriction agreement which sets out particular areas where cuts have to be made.
Todt has reiterated that he won’t be returning to the budget cap idea himself in future and would rather see further cost reductions achieved through the regulations.
"I'm against the budget cap, because in China for example they can do more with the investments that you make in other parts of the world,” he said.
“Savings need to be made through the rules, like for example a single aerodynamic package for the whole year.
“The cars slide more at Monaco? Perhaps we should look at the driver's ability instead!"
He stressed that future rule changes need to be made with the environment in mind, suggesting that it wasn’t good enough for F1 to simply ditch energy-storage devices such as KERS because the technology was too expensive to develop.
"I will work hard to make them [the rules] as clear as possible but I can't guarantee that there won't be problems, the engineers are clever,” Todt added.
“The future is tied to the new technologies: it's not acceptable to abandon KERS just because it's expensive, the teams need to work out a way to make it affordable.”
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