Mosley meets teams as zero-hour looms

In what is no doubt an eleventh-hour effort to stave off disaster, Max Mosley is meeting with the FOTA teams in London on Thursday.

Less than 24 hours before the FIA publishes the entry list for the 2010 world championship, a standoff that saw the eight teams lodge only conditional entries by the recent deadline is still yet to be resolved.

The Formula One Teams Association, whose expelled members Williams and Force India broke ranks and signed up unconditionally for next year's season, met in London also on Wednesday.

The remaining members, comprising Ferrari, McLaren, Renault, Toyota, BMW Brawn and the two Red Bull teams, do not accept FIA president Mosley's budget cap plans, and also want a new Concorde agreement signed immediately.

The danger of Friday's entry list is that it could lock the rebel teams out of Formula One, pushing them into following through their threat to set up a rival series.

Mosley this week urged the FOTA teams to drop the conditional status of their entries before Friday, and we reported on Wednesday that the Briton also wrote a separate letter to Ferrari.

It emerges that, in the letter, Mosley softened his stance in several areas, including agreeing to taper the cap from 100m to 45m euros in 2010-2011, agreeing to shortly sign a new Concorde, and - believed to be at the teams' behest - renaming the budget cap provisions to "financial regulations".

He also confirmed speculation that another highly paid employee per team, for example Red Bull's Adrian Newey, can be left outside the cap.