New series is a priority for FOTA

Formula One's rebel teams will start to work flat out on their new series immediately after the British Grand Prix - and forget about compromise deals with the sport's ruling body.

That was the message from Brawn GP team boss Ross Brawn on Sunday as he prepared for the 60-lap race and reiterated that the eight Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) outfits are now focusing only on their breakaway championship.

"FOTA now has to press ahead with its ideas and plans," said Brawn. "We can't wait until January and decide which way it is going to go. As each day passes, and each week passes then the options for reconciliation will reduce. The meetings start next week and we will arrive at a technical specification that we think offers the best racing and is cost effective. Things start next week and we will start to put some more detail to the proposal."

Brawn said that it is likely that the ruling body, the International Motoring Federation (FIA), would also be the regulatory body for any new series that they create.

"You would need a regulatory body," Brawn explained. "In fact, ironically, I think the agreement with the European Commission is that the FIA have to offer to do that to any competitive series that wants to set up - so the FIA have to offer to be at least the regulatory body. They may not be the body that sets the rules. They can be determined by some other mechanism. But if you want, the FIA can run the series for you. They can provide the stewards and so on. So that's available if FOTA wanted to take it up."

Other team bosses were less forthright about the future series. McLaren Mercedes boss Martin Whitmarsh said it would be foolish of teams not to accept an offer they are happy with if it was put forward by the FIA to settle the row.

"I don't think FOTA rules anything out," said Whitmarsh. "At the moment, as we said earlier in the week, the teams were presented with a deadline and, faced with that deadline, the teams did request that there was more time to find a solution. So, within that deadline the decision was taken, but I think the teams are open to discuss with anybody how we go motor racing next year."