It's a bit of a shame really, but perhaps a breakaway right now would be far too much hassle what with all the contractural issues.
I can only hope that things will be decided very much in FOTA's favour, and that Max and Bernie have realised that the teams will not be pushed too far and will not meddle so much in the future.
But as long as we have Bernie and FOM involved we still have the problem of good tracks being replaced by rubbish tracks.
I'm gathering that the FIA is going to pass control of technical regulations to FOTA, and just retain sporting regulatory control. How that gets divided up I'm not sure, but I think it will mean that the teams will have greater control over the direction that the sport goes. Financial control too, where they'll be able to agree on ways to uniformly reduce costs across teams without compromising the status of the sport. We'll have to see what happens next.
Why? Because the FIA most likely won't let FOTA do whatever they want with the regs, for instance if FOTA went and said 'Oh let's get rid of KERS, downforce, let's ban pitstops', the FIA'd most likely step in.
That depends on how much power the teams get, indeed. They want total and full control, but couldn't get it this time without either looking like complete arseholes, or starting their own series and look like arseholes.
They won the 'max' war... He's out in 2010. All they have to worry about now is who will replace him. I actually hope it's a bigger ass than max ever was. FOTA deserves that for staging this mutiny. In the old days you'd get marooned. These days you get what you want.
The deepest circle of hell is reserved for betrayers and mutineers. I'll be rooting for the new guys and Williams next year.
Having said that. Part 2 of FOTA's plan is to get rid of Bernie, so I'm looking for some controversy in that direction. I fully expect Bernie to become involved in some really juicy scandal and the teams demanding his retirement next.
So basically Max goes and the teams can gather the toys and put them all back in a pram now, they threw the temper tantrum and got what they wanted in the end. Wasn’t it the case that Max was planning to step down at the end of his reign anyway?