I don't understand Williams. If Frank Williams signed a letter sunday saying that they wouldn't submit their entry unless the current 2010 rules are scrapped, how can his team do the exact opoosite one day after?
Williams - like Brawn and Force India - are unique in Formula One. Unlike the other teams, they exist for one purpose and one purpose only: racing. If Ferrari, Renault, BMW
et al withdraw, they have their automotive operations to fall back on. Williams do not, and if they do not make the May 29th deadline and submit a late entry, there is a very real possibility that their current position on the grid will be forwarded to another team.
Given that Dave Richards' Prodrive outfit backed out in 2007 after receiving the sole entry avalable at the time, it could well be that Williams will be awarded a position on the grid, but elect not to use it if the FIA-FOTA war fails to come to a ceasefire agreement. It's true that Richards had no option but to withdraw owing to the customer chassis row and that Williams will likely incur a penalty if they back out, but Sir Frank - like Ross Brawn and Vijay Mallya - needs to secure his team's future in the event that a resolution is worked out in time simply because Williams exists only for racing. Either that, or he knows something we don't; given that what goes on in FOTA is pretty much Secret Teams' Business until after the fact, it wouldn't surprise me if he does. It could well be that we wake up tomorrow with headlines blaring that the dispute over the 2010 regulations has been worked out.
All the teams want is a little bit of continuity between this season and the next; they want the 2009 regulations, but they don't want to compomise new entries. I don't think they're opposed to the idea of a budget cap, but that they're opposed to having a budget cap
right now. This year has seen the most dramatic overhaul of the sport's regulations in its sixty-year history, and they evidently feel that going through another dramatic change is too much to ask right now. There's
the suggestion that the budget cap could be delayed until 2012 and some kind of compromise worked out so that new teams can join up but aren't going to suffer for it. People on both sides of the fence - including Mosely, Ecclestone, Domenicalli and Fry - are pretty confident that a resolution can be worked out in time, and even if it comes at the eleventh hour, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that every single team on the grid has completed an entry and all that remains is to submit it. It's exactly how I'd do it: avoid the risk of losing your spot on the 2010 grid owing to a late entry, but still being able to keep up your end of the arrangement with the other teams. Ferrari might be leading this little circus, and they might have threatened to withdraw over it, but that doesn't mean the others are going to be willing to take a bullet simply to satisfy Ferrari's desires. They'll have their entries prepared.
There's only one question that remains from Williams submitting its entry ahead of time: what does Sir Frank know that we don't?
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