A group of five teams will meet with the FIA on Thursday in Paris to discuss the Resource Restriction Agreement (RRA).
Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes, Williams and Marussia will be present at the meeting, however one of the teams most against the idea, Red Bull, won’t be in attendance.
The RRA is designed at cutting costs in the sport and has already seen spending cut from several hundreds of millions a season to just a couple of million, with Ferrari remaining the biggest spender at £166 million ($264m) in 2011.
Red Bull haven’t been included in the talks because the team is alone in thinking the idea, in which the FIA would enforce spending restrictions rather than the current ‘gentlemen’s agreement’, isn’t what’s needed.
“What I would like to make clear is Red Bull is fully behind cost control in Formula One,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner is quoted as saying. “Whether the RRA is the right route to achieve that is what we question.
“I believe that letter, from what I read, requested for the FIA to police the RRA, which in our opinion would be the wrong route.
“We believe wholeheartedly in controlling costs in Formula One and not frivolous spending. But there are better ways of doing that and containing that through the sporting and technical regulations as opposed to a resource restriction that relies on equivalence and apportionment of time and personnel.”
With the Milton Keynes based team so against the idea, it’s led to speculation that they may have something to hide, but Horner is adamant that isn’t the case.
Meanwhile, McLaren team principal and FOTA chairman Martin Whitmarsh understands Horner’s case, but says more must be done to secure the future of those who can’t afford unlimited spending.
“We can relate to everything [Horner says],” said Whitmarsh, “The fact is, at the moment, we all know there are Formula One teams struggling to survive. That tells us we’re not doing enough, and that’s why we’ve got to keep pushing.”
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