Politics take pole position in Abu Dhabi

With all the major issues resolved heading into the penultimate race of the Formula One season, the teams have changed focus onto the upcoming Formula One Teams Association meeting this weekend.

All the teams are set to meet in Abu Dhabi for what promises to be crunch talks for the sports future.

Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali has already called into question the future of the teams association (FOTA), with the teams falling out over the Resource Restriction Agreement (RRA).

Domenicali believes FOTA would hold no purpose and could collapse if an agreement cannot be reached over the RRA.

The RRA has been introduced to try and put a cap on spending in the sport, following years of overspending. But teams currently are questioning how the RRA is being regulated and some believe that some teams are breaking the RRA and gaining an unfair advantage by overspending.

But whilst the RRA is a key aspect of the meeting, other team principles do not believe that FOTA's existence is related.

In fact Mercedes GP team principal Ross Brawn and Renault team principal Eric Boullier both believe that perhaps the RRA could be managed by another organisation, leaving FOTA to work on the aspects the association are good at.

'You can't forget why FOTA came into existence. Faced with those circumstances again, we need FOTA. And it some ways we are going to have that situation again, because we are about to negotiate a new Concorde Agreement. Ross Brawn told Autosport Magazine.

Brawn continued: 'Perhaps FOTA needs to look at what it is best at, and perhaps when we get into debates about agreements that have an effect on the competitiveness of a team, it is a bit of a delicate area for FOTA to be getting involved in.

'If you are having a debate about resource, people, money and all the rest of it, it gets pretty highly charged and I wonder if that is the right arena for FOTA to be working on. I wonder if FOTA doesn't have a better role, and something like the RRA is kept out of that and it becomes just an inter-team agreement.

Eric Boullier said: 'My feeling is that the RRA should be applied because there is an agreement signed by all the teams, that is it.

'If it has to be audited by an independent company or the governing body it makes the life of FOTA difficult. Maybe it would help to have an external governing body to help and apply the reinforcing medium, but we should try and sort it ourselves.'