Flavio Briatore could be readying to burst back into formula one.

Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport said the ousted and formerly banned Italian is busily writing regulations for a ‘GP1′ championship.

They could be adopted should the FIA not sign up to the 2013 Concorde Agreement, according to the report.

Apparently, the political rumblings in F1 at present are not limited to the sport’s planned floatation, or Bernie Ecclestone’s spat with Mercedes.

Cost-control is also a buzzword. As reported recently, the vast majority of F1′s teams want the FIA to enshrine cost-cutting in the actual sporting regulations, even to the point of pushing for a once highly-controversial budget cap.

F1 chief executive Ecclestone, however, is not famously close with the FIA’s new president Jean Todt, and according to Auto Motor und Sport he is not convinced that the Paris federation needs to write and control the rules.

Enter Briatore. The German report said Ferrari will be a fan of the former Renault chief’s rumoured regulations, as they steer away from the premium on aerodynamics.

It is possible formula one teams will be limited to a budget cap in 2013, according to Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport.

The budget cap idea saw the sport almost implode amid the bitter political war of 2009, when proposed by controversial former FIA president Max Mosley.

But it is back on the agenda in 2012, and according to new rules – where a majority of teams can now push through a change – it could be imposed next season.

“Ten of the 12 teams are in favour,” Auto Motor und Sport said, referring to the push to have cost-cutting moved from the FOTA gentleman’s agreement to the actual sporting regulations.

It means that the two dissenting teams, the Red Bull-owned Red Bull Racing and Toro Rosso, will have no say.

“The cost to be competitive in formula one at present is too high,” the boss of the energy drink company’s premier team, Christian Horner, said recently. “I don’t think anybody will dispute that.

“The debate is how we achieve it.”

Not only that, the German report said nine teams are in favour of Mosley’s old budget cap idea, with annual expenditure limited initially to EUR 170 million and then diminishing to 100 million over a few seasons.

Sebastian Vettel has defended his former mentor Michael Schumacher.

The seven time world champion has been roundly criticised since last Sunday’s Spanish grand prix, after crashing into Williams’ Bruno Senna at the end of the Barcelona straight.

He called the Brazilian driver an “idiot” on the radio and later defended the outburst, but the FIA did not agree, imposing a five-place qualifying penalty for Monte Carlo for causing a collision.

“For us, that manoeuvre of Michael’s cost us a lot,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said on Austrian Servus TV.

He said the debris from the crash not only damaged Vettel’s front wing, but led to the reigning world champion having to serve a drive-through penalty due to activating his DRS wing in the yellow-flag zone.

German Vettel, however, defended Schumacher.

“In those situations we don’t have much time of course,” he said, “and you can get very great speed differences (between the cars) on the straights.

“I think it should be classified simply in the category of racing accidents. Unfortunately it happens,” said the reigning world champion.

“Of course you can always say what is what afterwards,” added Vettel, “just as you can say that it always takes two to tango.”

Mercedes’ Norbert Haug was less eager to comment, although he did tell Germany’s Sport1 that the team “accepts the verdict of the race stewards”.

Martin Whitmarsh is sure McLaren’s recent errors will not affect contract negotiations with Lewis Hamilton.

The British team’s latest mistake not only cost Lewis Hamilton pole in Spain, it put the 2008 world champion to the very back of the grid.

Asked if he worries that the now seemingly constant flow of team gaffes will damage McLaren’s efforts to re-sign Hamilton, Whitmarsh insisted: “No, I don’t.

“He has got to build the support of the team, he has got to feel comfortable doing it, he has got to want to drive and he is in good shape,” British newspapers quote the McLaren team principal as saying.

“I look forward to working with him for a long time to come.”

But Whitmarsh admitted that, given Hamilton’s tumultuous 2011 season, he was worried the British driver might have despaired last Saturday when the team’s refuelling mistake cost the 27-year-old pole.

“I was concerned,” he said, “because it is a pretty tough thing to happen to a driver.

“But I have to say he showed some greatness I had not seen before. By the end of our chat he was consoling me.

“The relationship between Lewis and the team is stronger and better and hopefully we will work together for a long time,” added Whitmarsh.

The penalty might be harsh, but the loss of Lewis Hamilton’s pole in Spain is just the latest calamitous mistake by McLaren.

That was the tone of the paddock’s reaction to the news late on Saturday that a McLaren gaffe saw the FIA send Hamilton from first to last on the Spanish grand prix grid.

The Sun newspaper called it a draconian “24-place grid penalty” imposed by the FIA after an “astonishing cock-up” by McLaren.

Hamilton was told on the radio to pull over after his pole lap due to a “technical problem”.

Sporting director Sam Michael argued ‘force majeure’, but the stewards ruled that it had been entirely McLaren’s fault that not enough fuel was put into Hamilton’s car to ensure a scrutineering fuel sample.

Writing in the Telegraph, Tom Cary said the severity of the disqualification “raised eyebrows”, but agreed that “McLaren’s mistake was horrendous”.

He said it has been “a season of errors” by the famous British team, who are yet to get Hamilton’s signature on a new contract beyond 2012.

“Hamilton must be seething,” read an article in the Daily Mail newspaper, while The Times laid out McLaren’s “catalogue of errors”.

27-year-old Hamilton’s “raw talent is being thwarted by mishap and cock-up,” said journalist Kevin Eason.

“McLaren are lovely people but how the hell do they get themselves in this position?” wrote the Mirror’s Byron Young on Twitter.

Even the non-English language media agreed.

“It was another great mistake by McLaren that could eventually cost Hamilton the championship,” wrote Livio Oricchio in O Estado de S.Paulo.

Italy’s La Stampa called McLaren’s fuel gaffe a case of “harakiri”.

Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport added: “It was error number 13 for McLaren since last year”.

While highly critical of McLaren’s own-goal, however, the feeling in the paddock is that the stewards’ penalty – although accepted by McLaren – was overly harsh.

“Back of the grid? Way, way too harsh”, said the Mirror’s Young on Twitter.

“Draconian penalty in my view,” agreed PA Sport’s Ian Parkes. “Dropping Q3 time would have sufficed.”

Sky commentator Martin Brundle added: “(I) feel they should have deleted that (Q3) laptime only which would have put him sixth”.

And excluding Hamilton from Q3 altogether would have put him 11th. Now, he will be “lucky to score a point”, Auto Motor und Sport predicted.

In the Independent, however, David Tremayne noted: “Welcome to the draconian world of F1.”

David Croft, the lead Sky commentator, said the FIA stewards had acted correctly.

“A good rule should be one that covers all eventualities with a penalty that acts as a deterrent which in this case is what happened.

“Too little fuel can’t be tolerated,” he added. “It seems harsh but had Lewis taken pole by one thousandth of a second, would it be harsh then?”

The Spanish fans – not Hamilton’s biggest supporters dating back to his spats with Fernando Alonso in 2007 – were happy.

Asked on the El Mundo website whether the penalty was fair, 76 per cent answered yes.

A third team has decided to join Red Bull in Abu Dhabi for the young drivers’ test.

Due to the calendar congestion at the end of this season, and also to cut costs, most teams have opted to drop the Abu Dhabi option in favour of testing young drivers in July, at Silverstone.

But Red Bull, and its second team Toro Rosso, are sticking with the original November plan, amid criticism July is too early to be assessing young drivers.

McLaren is now following suit.

“Our plan at McLaren at the moment is to test in Abu Dhabi,” said the British team’s sporting director Sam Michael, who said another factor against Silverstone is that teams are only half-way through their engine mileage allocations in July.

“Engines is a significant factor,” the Australian explained.

“If you want to test at the end of the year, you have so many part-mileage engines that all have a little bit of mileage on them so you can effectively do it for free, in terms of your race engines,” said Michael.

“If you try and do that in the middle of the year, you can’t use your race engines so you have to prepare a special test engine.”

Top teams McLaren and Red Bull have questioned whether F1 should have tested last week.

Since the sport clamped down hard on private testing for cost reasons some years ago, there remained many in the paddock – notably Ferrari – who argued that at least some in-season testing should still take place.

So, for 2012, it was agreed that Mugello would host a three-day session in between the Bahrain and Spanish grands prix.

Every team except HRT attended.

But there were rumblings that not everyone was happy. McLaren, in fact, did not even send its race drivers Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton to Tuscany.

Then, on Friday in Spain, the British team’s regular duo was busily testing in official practice, fielding extravagant sensors and experimental components.

“We would have had a very similar programme whether we went to Mugello or not,” said sporting director Sam Michael.

“All the teams are geared up to not have testing, to not having test teams and that means we’re equipped and do our planning to do all of that work on Friday.

“I think the (Mugello) test itself, personally, I think you could do without it,” Michael continued. “I think it’s a lot of energy and expense during the season that we probably don’t need.

“Of course McLaren will gain a lot out of that test but formula one is all relative, so all we really did was spend a load of money.”

Red Bull’s technical boss Adrian Newey agreed.

“I think we learnt the pasta in Italy is still the best in the world and that’s about it really,” he said when asked about the Mugello test.

“I’d agree with what Sam says. To me, yes you go to the test because it’s available. We all spent money but the value of in-season testing has to be questionable.”

Stefano Domenicali has ruled out responding to Ferrari’s latest crisis with the old ‘rolling heads’ technique.

One perception in the paddock is that the fabled Italian team, under intense pressure from the Tifosi and president Luca di Montezemolo, often reacts by emotionally shedding staff, with Aldo Costa and Chris Dyer the obvious recent examples.

So, having installed new faces including Pat Fry but still struggling with the latest F2012 project, will boss Domenicali set heads rolling again?

“Firing people is the work of two minutes,” he is quoted by Germany’s Auto Bild, “but this would not solve our problem.

“Instead I need to find new people who can improve the organisation and push the engineers to improve the car,” added the Italian.

In the meantime, there is no silver bullet.

“I am not happy with the F2012 project,” he acknowledged.

“But if you want to see the glass half full rather than half empty, then Fernando has done a great damage control and, with an improved car, he at least has the possibility to continue to fight for the championship.

“We have to improve,” Domenicali insisted. “I have asked my people to wake up and respond, and I will no longer hear excuses.”

HRT Formula 1 Team incorporates Kyocera Document Solutions as its Official Supplier through a collaboration agreement for the 2012 season. The Spanish team will count on Kyocera’s services, which include needs for management and printing of documents, both at the team’s permanent offices in the Caja Mágica and at the mobile offices that travel throughout the world during the Formula 1 season.

Kyocera Document Solutions has a vast experience in the sporting world and, even more so, in the motorsport one, since it’s responsible for the management and printing of documents at the F1 and MotoGP Grands Prix at the Circuit de Catalunya, Valencia Street Circuit and Motorland Aragón. At all of these Kyocera offers high quality devices and services that adapt to the rigurous demands that any F1 Grand Prix has, meeting the demands of the media office and the organization at the circuit itself, including a permanent 24-hour service.

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HRT Formula 1 Team continues to progress firmly towards its objective of consolidating itself and growing and it now takes another step forward thanks to the partnership with the multinational Japanese company Kyocera. It’s another support for the young Spanish outfit who, thanks to the seriousness and hard work that it proves day by day, has more national and international companies willing to back HRT, contributing to its consolidation and progress in the pinnacle of motorsport.

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Tony Fernandes has admitted he would have liked corporate Malaysia to have backed his formula one team.

The Malaysian entrepreneur founded a UK based start-up team in 2010, calling it Team Lotus before a bitter spat developed with the Lotus name’s owner Proton.

“While I was building a formula one team, I was being sued by my own countrymen,” he told The Star newspaper.

“We’re the only true formula one team developed in Malaysia.”

Now called Caterham, the team’s only Malaysian sponsorship is from AirAsia — Fernandes’ own low-cost airline.

“Never mind that we were not sponsored (by Malaysia), that’s a company’s prerogative,” he said. “But, we were sued.”

Some have accused Caterham of not having progressed much since 2010, but Fernandes strongly disagrees.

“Two years ago we had nothing. We’re now 1.5 seconds away from Red Bull who are the world champions. We’re closing the gap.

“You can’t build Rome in a day,” he insisted.

F1′s new face of 2012 is polarising the sport.

It seems teams, drivers and spectators alike either love or hate the new great influence brought largely by Pirelli’s new generation of tyres.

An admitted critic is Michael Schumacher.

“It’s a 1000 piece puzzle that you need to put together at each race,” said the seven time world champion, according to Auto Motor und Sport.

Not for three decades have four different drivers driving for four different teams won the opening four grands prix of a season.

“From the standpoint of competition,” wrote Livio Oricchio in O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper, “there is no doubt that the Pirelli 2012 generation meets fully the objective of promoting the show.

“But if you think purely about the engineering challenge that is formula one, and the genius of the people and the immense financial and technical resources needed for success, the tyres have now taken on such an importance that the results don’t seem compatible.

“Myself, and many in formula one, hope the new versions of tyres that Pirelli is developing returns a little more predictability in terms of how they behave, without affecting the show too much.”

For now, however, the teams need to put their puzzles together, and that will undoubtedly be the focus of this week’s three-day in-season test at Mugello.

“He who understands the tyres first,” McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh astutely noted, “will have a huge advantage in the world championship.”

A broad understanding is already developing, including why 2012 winners Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso, Nico Rosberg and Sebastian Vettel won from the very front of the field.

“When you’re in a battle, you can’t take the lines that are best for the tyres,” said Mercedes’ Ross Brawn.

All eyes are now turning to Mugello, where the understanding will continue.

“These test days could change the balance of power in formula one,” Norbert Haug predicted dramatically in Bild newspaper.

Not everyone is enthusiastic, however, including McLaren who oppose the Mugello test on cost grounds.

Williams’ chief engineer Mark Gillan agrees: “The days of test teams are gone, so this is not logistically easy,” he is quoted by Germany’s Sport1.

Bruno Senna added: “Mugello is not an ideal test track, as it’s very different to most of the tracks that are on the calendar.”

With the F1 world now returned from Bahrain, the sport is assessing the fallout of one of the most controversial grands prix in history.

The drivers were conspicuously quiet over the saga in the island Kingdom, but – with no contract tying him down – former Force India driver Adrian Sutil admitted he was glad he was not there.

“In a situation like that, it is probably better not to go,” the German said on Sky Deutschland.

“On the one hand, the decision was made (to go to Bahrain), on the other hand, it’s very difficult when there are so many problems in a country.”

Red Bull reserve driver Sebastien Buemi, who has family living in Bahrain, does not agree at all.

“I arrived on Monday and I had no problem — maybe there were a few more police than two years ago, but nothing happened to me,” the Swiss insisted on Austrian Servus TV.

Force India and Sauber, however, witnessed Molotov cocktail attacks on their treks to and from the circuit.

And Caterham team spokesman Tom Webb told the Sun that there was “one minor incident when one of our (hire) vans slowed down in traffic and its occupants saw a local youth on the side of the main road brandishing a bottle with a rag stuffed in its neck”.

World champion and race winner Sebastian Vettel also admitted the feeling was tense in the paddock throughout the weekend.

“It was not easy for anyone,” the Red Bull driver admitted, according to SID news agency, “but I’m glad that nothing happened to any of us (in F1).”

And the Telegraph quotes Vettel adding: “Hopefully, we come back in the future when everything’s a little bit safer.”

Reuters reports that Vodafone, the main sponsor of the half Bahrain-owned McLaren team, sent no staff to the country and expressed concerns to the British outfit.

But Jim Wright, an F1 sponsorship expert, told the Guardian that he thinks while the sport’s image took a beating last weekend, sponsors will be happy.

“Most teams handled a difficult decision very well,” he said. “On that basis I think a lot of people would be pleased with that and happy to get involved with them.”

The television audience was also unaffected – even boosted – with the BBC reporting more viewers for Bahrain than Australia and Malaysia, and Germany revealing similarly strong figures.

Still, there remains criticism.

“Now is an opportunity to reflect,” former F1 driver Alex Zanardi told Tuttosport, “and make sure that major sporting events are assigned only to governments that deserve the honour of hosting them.

“Ecclestone is brilliant and has made formula one what it is, but he can’t administer races at any cost and above all else,” insisted the Italian.

Due to security fears, Force India sat out a practice session on Friday so that staff could return to their hotels in daylight.

F1 chief executive Bernie Ecclestone was reportedly enraged, and according to rumours got his revenge by instructing Formula One Management’s television cameras to ignore the Silverstone based team’s cars in qualifying.

“There was a bit of fuss about what we did,” deputy team principal Bob Fernley is quoted by Spain’s AS newspaper, “and it was not easy, but I think it turned out to be the right response.

“We had a lot of pressure, our attitude was not well received,” he confirmed, “but I think that we had a duty of care to our employees, and to do the right thing by the team.”

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Despite winning in Malaysia last month, Fernando Alonso is expecting a miserable weekend in Bahrain.

On the back of his surprise Sepang victory, the Spaniard qualified and finished just ninth in China, and he is not expecting a better Ferrari until next month’s return to European grands prix.

“Obviously, this (result) does not leave me very optimistic for Bahrain, on a track where traction and speed are vital, exactly the areas where we are weakest,” said Alonso in Shanghai.

Even more bluntly, he said the Maranello based team is “far behind” the pacesetters because the F2012 has “big problems” in aerodynamics.

But the bright side, Alonso insisted, is that the field of 2012 is oddly tightly bunched.

“If we improve two, three tenths then we can jump several opponents,” he is quoted by Brazil’s O Estado de S.Paulo.

“The fight now is for fractions of seconds.”

After Ferrari and Sauber were quick in Malaysia, Mercedes’ Nico Rosberg dominated in China — but many in the paddock still believe McLaren has the quickest car overall.

Indeed, Jenson Button is ruing a team mistake – a cross-threaded wheel nut during a pitstop – that he says cost him a shot at Shanghai victory.

“There can’t be many more mistakes if you want to compete for a championship, definitely not,” he said.

Ross Brawn has confirmed reports that Mercedes’ 2012 ‘F-duct’ will not be easily copied by rival teams.

We reported on Thursday that while Red Bull and now Ferrari worked quickly to copy Sauber’s clever exhaust solution, they are crying foul over the Mercedes F-duct.

Is it because they really believe it breaks the rules, or is the system simply difficult to copy?

Red Bull designer Adrian Newey was quoted by Brazilian O Estado de S.Paulo newspaper in Malaysia: “In regard to the aerodynamic (F) duct of the Mercedes, and sending the airflow from the back to the front, it is necessary to review the entire project.”

Mercedes team boss Brawn confirmed: “The opposition is so fierce (because) there’s a recognition it’s quite difficult to do.”

He rejected the rivals’ arguments about cost, however, insisting Mercedes’ system consists mainly of carbon tubing costing no more than thousands of pounds.

“It’s a very simple, cheap system, but not so easy to implement if you haven’t integrated it into your car,” said the Briton.

“This is at the heart of the frustration of some of our opponents. If someone could put it on their car easily, I promise you we wouldn’t be having these discussions.”

It emerged this week, however, that despite the FIA having consistently sided with Mercedes on the F-duct issue, Lotus’ technical boss James Allison has come up with two new arguments that will be put to Charlie Whiting next week in China.

“We would obviously be extremely disappointed if someone was to take a different view,” said Brawn.

“The FIA have been fairly consistent over their position so we have faith that they’ll maintain that consistency.”