Stoddart: Our car is legal!

Minardi boss Paul Stoddart has dismissed suggestions that his team could be excluded from the season opening Australian Grand Prix on March 3-6, adding that 'sanity will prevail', and the team will be allowed to run with the last year's car, the PS04B, until the San Marino Grand Prix on April 24.

Speaking to the Melbourne-based Sports Entertainment Network [SEN] the Aussie rubbished reports on the web, that the 2004 car may not meet the technical regulations for 2005.

Asked if it was correct or not, he replied: "Total rubbish. It's a lot more complicated than perhaps it's been made to sound on some of the websites, but the simple version goes something like this: the 2005 regulations that were brought in last year under a very interesting safety clause within our governing agreement, which didn't have the support of the teams and was procedurally flawed in the way it was brought in, has left the teams not really knowing what regulations they're racing to in 2005. It's my belief, and that belief is backed up by some pretty solid legal advice, that the 2004 regulations are still in force.

"As such, we've elected not to waste a lot of money that a team like Minardi can ill afford to do, by doing an interim car, as it's called, that may be racing to 2005 regulations, maybe if they're legal. We are going to stand by, as I said, some very solid legal advice that the 2004 regulations are still in full force and effect, and we will be racing our 2004 cars legally in Melbourne, Malaysia and Bahrain. After that we are introducing our 2005 car."

Thus far eight of the nine of other teams have agreed to allow Minardi to race with last season's car in the opening three grands prix, however Ferrari has yet to give any indication on their stance on the matter.

FIA president Max Mosley meanwhile has suggested that if 'no prior agreement was reached', and Minardi presented a 2004 car, which would be illegal under the current regulations, then scrutineers would have no choice but not to put a sticker on it and it would never get out of the pits.

Stoddart reckons though it won't come to that...

"I would like to think that sanity will prevail," he added, "But you never know in Formula One. We're ready for that situation, totally ready for it, and were that to happen we would race under protest. And were a protest not to be entertained at the track it certainly would in the Victorian Supreme Court, and we've taken some pretty solid legal advice and, if necessary we will be presenting ourselves up there and asking for injunctive relief to race under protest for a case that we know we would win ultimately when the arbitration was heard, some months further down the line. It's all been well rehearsed."