MAY 6, 2005

Armageddon postponed?

British American Racing Honda has announced that it is not going to go to a civil court because it cannot get legal matters sorted out fast enough to be able to run in Spain. This left open the option of taking action over the team's involvement in Monaco and injunctions around the big event of the F1 season. This would obviously have had the potential to cause massive disruption for all the teams and so the decision has been taken not to dispute the ban at Monaco as the damage has already been done in Spain.

So the FIA has won this round of the war but that does not mean that the battle is over and the issues raised by the whole San Marino incident will be stored away for when the next confrontation and it is fairly clear that it will not be long before we have more problems between the teams and the federation.

Max Mosley will talk to the F1 press later today about the whole business and will, no doubt, be pleased with the result. However, he has signalled that there might be more trouble ahead.

"We are now considering whether to select one car at random of the points scorers at every race," he said on Thursday, "and stripping it to the last nut and bolt. That will give a seven-to-one chance that if you are cheating and finish in the points, you will get caught."

Much, of course, depends on the definition of the word "cheating".