FIA opens tender process for standard ECU.

The FIA, F1's governing body has announced that any companies interested in becoming the sole standard ECU supplier for the F1 World Championship between 2008-2010 have until the end of June to submit their bids.

"The FIA has opened the tender process for a standard ECU supplier to the FIA Formula One World Championship in 2008, 2009 and 2010," confirmed the FIA in a statement on Saturday. "Bids must be submitted by the deadline of June 23, 2006."

The announcement follows a similar one earlier this week, but which was for tyres. Both measures are somewhat controversial, however while a standard tyre has received backing from the majority, if not all the teams, a number of them are less keen on having a standard ECU.

"It's a difficult one," said Toyota president, John Howett back at the Malaysian GP in March when asked about the matter. "I think in principal, most of the manufacturers would prefer freedom with the ECU.

"The actual cost of the ECU itself is not of an extreme magnitude. OK, one would probably need to be more draconian in restricting electronic capacity to significantly reduce the cost area. I think there is an issue of actually ensuring that there is no artificial aids which are intended to be eliminated, such as traction control in the future, and therefore by having a standard ECU it may make it very easy to police and avoid any rumours of a certain team having this capability or not. I believe that's one of the reasons that the FIA wishes to integrate the actual standard ECU, but I think as a preference we would prefer to keep freedom."

Williams co-owner, Patrick Head meanwhile added: "I can understand that for a lot of people, like BMW, building their own ECUs, it's an interesting challenge for them. I'm sure it has some relevance and some knock-on to their road car development and it must feel very uncomfortable for engineers to be told 'no, you can't do this, no you can't do a job in that area' and be given what will probably be a fairly middle-of-the-road type piece of hardware. It doesn't feel very Formula One-ish - but anyway, that's what we're told we're getting and it seems it's still Max [Mosley] and Bernie [Ecclestone]'s game so that's what we've got to play."