Spyker arbitration starts next week

With all the stories of the spy scandal that have been dominating the headlines for so long one could be forgiven for forgetting about Spyker's arbitration action in regard to customer cars, but it's still going ahead. Spyker believes Toro Rosso and Super Aguri are using what amount to customer cars and the first hearing date has been set for October 9th.

The Concorde Agreement stipulates that teams must build their own cars but it's alleged that this year's Toro Rosso STR2 and Super Aguri's SA07 are development versions of last year's Red Bull and Honda respectively. Toro Rosso and Super Aguri maintain that is not the case and previous attempts to defuse the argument have failed.

Spyker has questioned whether the two teams are eligible for television rights money and team principal Colin Kolles said he wants clarification of exactly what is, or is not, a customer car. Super Aguri currently has four points and Toro Rosso has none after Tonio Liuzzi lost eighth place in Japan due to a penalty, which gave the place and the point to Spyker's Adrian Sutil.