Schumacher joins the critics while Mosley remains calm

SILVERSTONE - Michael Schumacher Saturday joined the critics while Max Mosley, the man at the centre of the biggest storm in Formula One history, remained calm.

Mosley, the president of the ruling body FIA, said a solution can be found in a bitter budget cap row between eight teams and the FIA which escalated Friday when the teams announced a breakaway series and the FIA countered with legal action.

Talks were reportedly continuing Saturday at the British Grand Prix and the FIA announcement to postpone its final 2010 grid was rated a glimmer of hope.

The seven-time world champion Schumacher stopped short of naming Mosley but firmly blamed the FIA for the standoff and rated the new series a real alternative.

“It is simply not understandable that all teams share their view on how to approach the reforms and the governing body still wants to implement something else,” Schumacher, the former Ferrari star who is now an advisor for the famed Italian team, said on his website.

“Of course this seems unimaginable in the first moment, but this time all big teams stick together. This makes a new championship much more realistic.

“It is starting to be a real alternative to me. As a motorsport fan I want to watch the best show which is where the best drivers and the best teams compete with each other.”

Mosley, for his part, said that believes in a solution in which all top teams will be on the 2010 grid - although some like BMW or Toyota may have to withdraw due to the global economic crisis.

“We all know that there will be an F1 world championship and everyone who can be in it, will be,” he told the BBC.

“Always with these things in the end there’s a compromise. They can’t afford not to run in F1 and we would be very reluctant to have an F1 world championship without them.”

Mosley said he would’t retire because “what you can’t do is walk away from an organisation in the middle of a crisis” and dismissed as “a myth” claims that he was main problem.

Mosley spoke of “posturing and posing” and accused the Formula One Team Association (FOTA) of trying to gain full power in F1.

Many of the current manufacturers were involved in a previous breakaway threat out of which ultimately FOTA was founded last year. Mosley said he and commercial rights holder Bernie Ecclestone tried a similar thing in the 1980s before reaching a deal with FIA.

Others believe Mosley was the man to blame for the standoff.

“In the end the fate of Formula One should be decided by FIA, through that (the fate) of its president,” said French daily Le Figaro Saturday.

Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said that “the search for peace in the end failed due to Mosley’s leadership style” and British paper The Independent said in an editorial: “It’s no longer a row about budgets - this is personal.

“For sure, ego is involved on both sides. Mosley’s, and that of Ferrari president and the FOTA president Luca di Montezemolo … The teams want Mosley to go and are prepared to push as hard as they need to in order to achieve that end.

“A meeting of the FIA World Council could result in Mosley’s departure. Most likely it will not. But if Mosley stays, FOTA must go ahead with their series as Mosley continues with his, and therein would lie the seeds of the sport’s possible self-destruction.”

A breakwaway series would deprive F1 of the top teams including Ferrari, McLaren and championship leaders Brawn GP and leave F1 with the small teams of Force India and Williams plus newcomers.

The “rebels,” for their part, would have to start from scratch in all aspects ranging from tracks, television and marketing to rules.

Schumacher, who is now a Ferrari advisor, named the politics “extremely unfortunate” and hoped for a solution, one way or another.

“Formula One has always been the platform for the best drivers and the best teams. This is what is admired all over the world, this is what everybody wants to see.

“But if this is constantly put into question due to permanent uncertainty of rules it is maybe better to really defend that value, leave and establish it somewhere else in a reasonable way,” Schumacher said.