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Originally Posted by old man
The democratic principle of the strategy group is laudable but in the context of the FIA and F1 would seem to be flawed as any decisions may be thrown out by others, not least the Ferrari veto.
An interesting piece by D Renken on Autosport shows how the income to the Fiat Chrysler group that comes from FOM is very important to them.
The SG is there to suggest rules for a sporting series to follow, the power of Ferrari in particular to influence those rules for purely business/financial reasons is wrong and the FIA needs to change the overall situation, if that leads to Ferrari pulling out, well so be it. I agree that F1 needs Ferrari but not to the exclusion of sporting chance for all teams.
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The major problem there is that Ferrari have a legally binding contract with FOM that lasts until at least 2020. The FIA cannot interfere with that arrangement because they have no legal standing over FOM because they had to split the two to pacify the EU. I suppose that the FIA could always lodge a formal complaint with Brussels, but somehow don't believe that they will.
However, one has to take into consideration that although Ferrari have held the power of veto for possibly 20 or more years, they have only used it just once. And from reading various bits and pieces, it would seem that the scope for using the veto have been reduced over the years.
It would be interesting if Ferrari did leave if only because the resulting legal manoeuvring could be quite entertaining. FOM might sue because Ferrari hadn't complied with the terms of their contract, whilst Ferrari might well cross sue for the loss of the income stream that they would lose due to change in rules that were possibly forced through without going through the agreed procedures, somewhat like a constructive dismissal.