Ferrari pushing to stay under own terms

Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali has said his team will do all it can to remain in Formula 1 under its own terms - after lodging legal action against the FIA on Friday.

Following the failure of teams to reach agreement with the FIA during crisis talks at a Heathrow airport hotel to discuss fears about a two-tier F1, Ferrari lodged an injunction against the sport's governing body's plans for 2010.

Ferrari believes that the FIA has breached a technical veto it has on future technical regulation changes by pushing through a voluntary £40 million budget cap - and has taken its complaint to the French courts.

Speaking after a number of meetings on Friday, Domenicali made it clear that the Maranello outfit was pushing hard to ensure that it could remain in an F1 it was happy to race in.

"For us it's very important, it's our life," said Domenicali. "We want to fight in order to make sure that we will be in the championship in the right way."

The legal action in France was taken after Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo was given the authority by his company's board earlier this week to do all he could to protect Ferrari's interests.

Speaking about the action, Domenicali said: "What I can say is that there is nothing new in that. If you look at what was the outcome of our board, the Ferrari board, it was clearly indicated that the president has the mandate from the board to protect the rights of Ferrari."

Domenicali refused to confirm the specific existence of the technical veto - which was granted to the team back in 1998.

"I think I cannot go into these details. There are certain things that are in these rights and no more than that."

FIA president Max Mosley said he did not believe Ferrari's action, which is set to be heard next Tuesday, was valid because the team's veto was no longer in place.

"We will say first of all it is no longer in place and if they wanted to do a veto - they were in the [FIA] meeting on March 17 and they should have done it there if they didn't agree. Instead, they just sat there," said Mosley.

"Anyway, it will be our contention that they walked away from that agreement some time ago."

However, other teams said they were supportive of Ferrari's actions.

Toyota team principal John Howett said: "I understand Ferrari has taken some sort of action, and from Toyota's perspective we understand their position and we support them."