The FIA is set to issue legal proceedings against FOTA after eight F1 teams launched plans to break away.
Motorsport's governing body to start legal proceedings "without delay"
The FIA is to launch legal proceedings against the Formula One Teams' Association after the latter announced plans for a breakaway series.
After talks to reach a compromise on the FIA's planned budget cap for 2010 came to nought, FOTA's eight member teams - Ferrari, McLaren, Renault, BMW Sauber, Toyota, Brawn GP, Red Bull Racing and Toro Rosso - announced late on Thursday night their intention to pursue a rival series.
In response, world motorsport's governing body has decided legal action is its only recourse following meetings on Friday between FIA president Max Mosley and F1 commerical rights controller Bernie Ecclestone at Silverstone - venue for this weekend's British Grand Prix.
The legal action is, in part, in retaliation to Ferrari instigating arbitration
proceedings on Monday to protect their contractual rights with the FIA.
Confirming its intentions, a statement read: "The FIA's lawyers have now examined the FOTA threat to begin a breakaway series.
"The actions of FOTA as a whole, and Ferrari in particular, amount to serious violations of law including wilful interference with contractual relations, direct breaches of Ferrari's legal obligations and a grave violation of competition law. The FIA will be issuing legal proceedings without delay.
"Preparations for the 2010 FIA Formula One World Championship continue but publication of the final 2010 entry list will be put on hold while the FIA asserts its legal rights."
The list was due to be published on Friday after the FIA gave five FOTA teams a deadline by which to drop conditions attached to entries they made last week.
Posturing
Despite their potential to split the sport in two, Mosley labelled events that have taken place in recent hours, days, weeks and months as "posturing".
He also expressed confidence that all eight FOTA teams will be involved in next year's world championship.
"Always with these things in the end there is a compromise because they can't afford not to run in the Formula One world championship, and we would be very reluctant to have that without them," Mosley remarked.
"But I don't take this as seriously as some people do because it is all posturing and posing.
"It will all stop some time between the beginning of 2010 and March 2010 with the first race in Australia. It will all settle down and everybody will go racing."
Referring to the time he and Ecclestone themselves took on the sport's governing body on behalf of the constructors, he added: "You have to remember we did all of this back in 1981. Bernie and I ran a rebel series.
"We started the World Federation of Motorsport, had a calendar of races, and we actually ran what the FIA described as a pirate race.
"But in the end we settled with the FIA and it was all peace in our time.
"We went much further than these people at the moment are talking about."
Staying on?
Mosley, who is due to stand down as president in October, insists the row is encouraging him to stay on longer - a situation that would hardly encourage the FOTA teams to come back into the fold.
The 69-year-old is coming towards the end of a fourth term in office, having been originally elected president of the FIA back in 1993.
He added: "I don't want to go on for too long, but the difficulty the teams are putting me in is that even if I wanted to stop in October, they are making it very difficult for me to do so.
"Everything they are doing is counter-productive. The people in the FIA are saying to me, 'We've all this trouble, we're being attacked. You must stay.'
"Whereas if we didn't have this and we had peace and I said I'd actually like to stop in October, they wouldn't really mind and someone else would come along.
"I'd be much more likely to step down if there was peace because I am nearly 70.
"Quite apart from maybe being too old, you've not that much longer where you are fit and well and you can do all sorts of things, and you don't really want to work that hard.
"But what you can't do is walk away from an organisation in the middle of a crisis."
