Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo has been chosen to lead the
Formula One Teams' Association (FOTA), formed following a meeting held with
F1 ringmaster
Bernie Ecclestone and Donald McKenzie, representing commercial partners CVC, at the
Scuderia's Maranello headquarters earlier this week [see separate story
click here].
The new body was established with unanimous support to enable all ten F1 teams to work together with governing body the
FIA and Ecclestone's company Formula One Management on commercial, technical and regulatory conditions, as the sport looks towards the future.
Though a Ferrari spokesman insisted in the immediate aftermath of the reunion that no figurehead had been selected for the forum, German magazine
Sport Bild has revealed that di Montezemolo who also presided over the Tuesday meeting will be the official FOTA spokesman for the next twelve months.
There is no current Concorde Agreement the contract stipulating the commercial and financial details by which the teams compete, including prize money and television revenues following the expiry of the last one at the end of 2007 and the failure to come to terms for a new one. The formation of FOTA is the first step in a bid to reach a satisfactory resolution for the years ahead, as well as burying any threat of a breakaway grand prix series, an alternative that has been mooted in recent months.
The meeting came about off the back of a letter sent by
Max Mosley back at the start of July, in which the FIA President gave the teams until October to conduct a wide-ranging consultation' to come up with their own proposals and measures for radically changing the way that F1 is run and improving the sport's environmental image, cutting costs and fuel emissions and embellishing the overall spectacle or else have the rules made up for them.
