Force India's Bob Fernley says top four teams want to control F1

Force India deputy team principal Bob Fernley has said that Friday’s meeting of F1’s ‘big four’ teams shows they are intent on driving independents from the sport in favour of customer outfits.

Team bosses from Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren met in the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve paddock to discuss the proposal, which was raised at last month’s Strategy Group meeting.

Force India and Williams are both members of the Strategy Group this season, although neither was present at Friday’s meeting - with Fernley telling Sky Sports F1 that it was the latest step in the top teams’ move to control the sport.

"What you have to look at is why are the four teams working together the way they are,” he said. “We have to go back a little bit in time - I seem to remember saying to you in Austin I felt there was a programme to drive the independent teams out, which was shortly after the Marussia and Caterham demises.

“I still believe that was the plan for them and this is now the final part of the jigsaw puzzle.”

The top teams have stressed that the use of customer cars  – by what they're calling “franchises” – should be seen as a contingency plan if grid numbers drop lower than the current total of 20 cars.

Yet Fernley insisted that benevolence is far from being the top teams’ priority and said that the Strategy Group – which he labelled as “not fit for purpose” at the Monaco GP – has entirely failed to tackle the sport’s underlying problems.

"In the last 18 months they have resisted all attempts to get costs under control,” he said. “They refused point-blank to look at a more equitable distribution of income. Even powertrains, we can't get an agreement to get the costs down and there's a reason for that - to make it as difficult as possible for the independent teams to survive and so customer cars can come in.

“That means that all the power and all of the finances are centred into four teams. That's the intention."

Live Formula 1