Formula One news

McLaren: The calm of the political storm?

McLaren's Martin Whitmarsh has suggested that his team has spent the last several weeks acting as the middle ground between FOTA and the FIA as disagreements remain unsettled ahead of Wednesday's meeting between the two parties in London, with regards to the £40m budget cap of 2010.

With only one full day remaining after the meeting for teams to submit entries to the Formula One World Championship for next year, the governing body will select which outfits will compete on its way to filling a maximum of thirteen garages in the pit lane. Whitmarsh stressed McLaren's important role in the situation as four teams have already threatened to leave the sport. "We do feel responsible for being a peacemaker or to help try and bring that together," said the team principal of the Woking-based squad.

Ferrari's Luca di Montezemolo is keen to see the abolishment of the FIA's budget cap

"Formula 1 is our core business and I'd hope, if you talked to any team in F1, they would say that McLaren is being very constructive and conciliatory - sought for compromise - and we've seen it as our role; we are right in the middle in terms of budgets. We've got large teams and large continental corporations that are wrestling with the concept of becoming smaller and we've got small teams that are trying to survive and I think we can have an affinity from our position with both of those."

A series of meetings has seemingly failed to result in a compromise between the Formula One Teams' Association (FOTA) and governing body the FIA to date, however, as new teams also line up for next year's grid. "You've got to try and bring together the Toyota business model with that of a Toro Rosso, then that's quite a challenge," Whitmarsh continued. "I hope we are in a position where we can understand that and I like to believe that we and Mercedes-Benz can and have been very constructive in trying to bring those together - I think we very much try to do just that."

Going on to talk of McLaren's own views towards the issue, Whitmarsh voiced his insistence of clear of keeping the matter out of the media limelight. "We have been vocal within the group, not vocal outside it, and that's the right place to be vocal," he said.

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