Formula One must slash costs by 2010 or face serious problems, International Automobile Federation (FIA) president Max Mosley warned.
The Briton said that the global credit crunch had only made matters worse for the big-spending sport and there was a serious risk of some teams walking away if matters were not taken in hand.
“It has become apparent, long before the current difficulties, that Formula One was unsustainable,” he said.
“It really is a very serious situation. If we can’t get this (the cost cutting measures) done for 2010, we will be in serious difficulty.”
“At the moment, we’ve got 20 cars but, if we lost two teams, we’d have 16; three teams, 14. It then would cease to be a credible grid.”
“It depends, at the moment, on millionaires - or billionaires, as we don’t have millionaires now - subsidising it, people like Vijay Mallya or Dietrich Mateschitz. Without them, those [smaller] teams wouldn’t be there.”
With three races to go in a season that has already seen one team, Super Aguri, go to the wall, Mosley warned that it would not be long before the manufacturers behind the biggest teams felt pressure to cut back or suspend all F1 activity altogether.
“The days when [the teams] could just toss out 100 million euros, 200m, 400m a year - which is what Formula One costs those big companies - are finished,” he said.
Toyota, the only team currently on the grid without an F1 win in its history, is rumoured to spend more than 400m euros a year.
He is now expected to engage in ‘do or die’ talks with the recently-formed Formula One Teams Association to hammer home his message.
