'F1 is becoming a soap opera'

It's Sunday and your television is offering a choice. On Channel A, McLarens, Ferraris and other speed machines you know and love zoom around a track. Channel B has similar fare, but the racing teams and drivers are almost total unknowns. Which do you watch?

Exactly. No contest.

On Friday - the ground in this saga has been shifting like quicksand - that where-do-my-loyalties-lie scenario was the future being presented to downtrodden fans of Formula One.

Frankly, given the wringer they've been put through, it's amazing F1 has any followers left. The sport is becoming a soap opera as trite as Dynasty, without the amusing shoulderpads and hairdos.

Episode One: Naughty British tabloid News of the World somehow gets its hands on video showing Max Mosley, the boss of motorsport who seems to have been around as long as the internal combustion engine, having his bottom spanked in a kinky romp with prostitutes last year.

Episode Two: Mosley not only keeps his job as president of the International Automobile Federation but comes out swinging, ordering big-spending F1 teams to drastically tighten their belts as the global economy and car manufacturers jump off the cliff like lemmings. F1 drivers will still be allowed to bathe each other in champagne - cider, of course, would be cheaper - when they win races, but teams that exceed a budget cap imposed and policed by Mosley's outfit would have their wings clipped.

Episode Three: F1 teams accustomed, thank you, to the high-life, rebel. They huff that they are sick and tired of being told what's good for them and that they are trying to cut costs as best they can. In the small hours of Friday morning, eight of the 10 teams announced that they have "no alternative" but to go their own way and start preparations to set up a rival championship.

The rebels include just about everyone who is anyone in F1: McLaren, Ferrari (which has competed in every race since 1950), Renault, Toyota, BMW Sauber, Red Bull Racing, Toro Rosso, and miraculously reborn Brawn. It nearly died last year when backer Honda decided it could no longer pay the bill but is this season's winning outfit, leaving everyone in its dust.

"The major drivers, stars, brands, sponsors, promoters and companies historically associated with the highest level of motorsport will all feature in this new series," said the rebels' statement (really, to be a proper ransom note, it should have been put together with letters cut out from magazines).

With a populist touch, it added: "This series will have transparent governance, one set of regulations, encourage more entrants and listen to the wishes of the fans, including offering lower prices for spectators worldwide, partners and other important stakeholders." So the soap opera is spawning a spin-off. Sigh. Soon, that trampling sound could well be fans and sponsors heading for the doors.

Those who run this otherwise noble if environmentally-questionable sport now have stark choices: Either keep digging their own grave or start acting like grown-ups.

Mosley is right that F1 expenses need to be brought down and he should be applauded for trying to make it affordable to the point where new teams, including one from the United States, are signing up for 2010, but Mosley goofed in the execution. Force-feeding a crash diet and regulation changes as drastic as those he sprung on existing teams was never going to work. A little more tact might have worked wonders.

It has been clear for a while now - not least by the way that they banded together last July as a group to safeguard their interests - that F1 teams were concerned about Mosley's stewardship and weren't simply going to roll over and play dead. They also claim that the multibillionaire commercial boss of F1, Bernie Ecclestone, hasn't been fairly sharing the revenue the sport generates.

There's suspicion that Mosley and Ecclestone's hidden hope was that the radical cost-cutting proposals would severely divide the uppity F1 teams and thus quiet their clamour for a greater say in the sport. If true, then Mosley and Ecclestone clearly misjudged.

The only way out for them now may well be to climb down, but setting up a rival F1 championship may not be quite as easy as the rebels make it sound. Where will they race? What of contracts that bind teams to the existing series? Who will broadcast breakaway races and who will govern them? It sounds like lawyer heaven and, unless everyone finds a sensible compromise, more hell for fans.

John Leicester