F1: Ferrari's website - vicious but not entirely wrong

The posting, which is not attributed, is obviously written by an Englishman: it is laden with heavily tongue-in-cheek language that even those writing in derivative forms of English cannot get right - with the possible exception of the writers of Boston Legal and Frazier although there are quite a few Aussies that come close.

The piece is based around the premise that Max Moseley made a mess : that he drove away the corporate teams and in his dash to fill the grid with independents did not leave them enough time to raise the money and build the cars.

Some of that is true - although Moseley cannot be held responsible for all the world's major motor manufacturers deciding they were heading for insolvency and cutting off a large, bleeding limb.

None of the manufacturers ever came close to making F1 pay. And while there were side-benefits in the sense of building advertising hoardings that TV audiences pay to see, and of association with the world's most glamorous sport (that's open to debate, surely) for them the Japanese teams, in particular, were a sink-hole.

There are those, of course, who will say that the Toyota cars last year could have done with brakes that didn't slow the cars down and accelerators that made them go faster even when the driver didn't want to. But BMW certainly did not turn out to be The Ultimate Driving Machine, Renault shot itself in the foot and lost its main sponsor half-way through the season resulting in what amounts to a sale of everything except the name; Honda had already packed up and gone home - twice if one counts Super Aguri.

The reality, though, is that F1 is a game for the super-rich. And even if Moseley had forced through is budget cap, 2010 would still be a struggle.

A brave effort from Lightspeed turned quietly into the soon-to-be Malaysian based Lotus - and that was months before the reality check of the end of season departure of BMW and Toyota were announced.

There's a rule in F1 that teams have to design their own chassis. But that includes contracting out design and production: that's where Dellara come in. Dellara are the kind of company that no one knows about outside the motor racing industry; within the industry they are something quite special. So it was to them that Spanish F1 hopefuls Campos Meta turned to produce a chassis with the potential to win. But about two weeks ago, it all went nastily wrong and Campos, which has run cars in other series for a decade - and not run into dire straits, suddenly ran out of money. Dallara stopped work. Adrian Campos sold out and by the middle of last week, the whole team was owned by Jose Ramon Carabante and a second, mystery shareholder.

Rumours promptly started that the other shareholder was YouTube founder, Chad Hurley, who is presently a major shareholder in US F1. And another rumour started that Volkswagen might decide to take over Campos. That's not as crazy as it sounds: VW's SEAT brand, based near Barcelona, has been having considerable success in saloon car racing - with a diesel engined machine. OK, so that's perhaps not quite as radical as Volvo's apparently mad decision to enter 700 series estate cars into the BTCC series - but they shut up the critics by winning. And VW has a stonking record - again with diesels - through its AUDI Le Mans series cars. Then there's Skoda rally cars and - partly by luck - Porsche sports car racing. And VW is not new to single seaters - Formula Volkswagen was a mainstay of single seat "junior" racing - and then there was Formula Palmer Audi.

Dellara have gone back to work with a promise that they will be paid in full - but the bill is already in double figures of millions of euro, say some commentators.

Earlier this week rumours started that Hurley was about to jump ship to Campos. That was hastily denied by US F1 - which promptly had to announce that one of its few sponsors had concluded that a team that was already admitting that it would miss 20% of the season was not a very effective form of advertising.

Then came rumours that Hurley was negotiating a merger - or at least considering doing so - with Campos. That makes some sense: US F1 has what it calls a "satellite base" in Spain. If the teams merged, then US F1's expensive tech in North Carolina could be used for back-office development while Campos's European base and contacts could actually get a car to the grid for the first race - in fact Campos is hoping to get two cars there.

US F1 has only one driver - and the announcement of that was that terms had been agreed, not that Lopez had actually signed - and there's been nothing since.

US F1 is racking up debt and has no obvious source of funds to contain the outflow. A member of staff said salaries were a week late in January. The February salaries are due this weekend. By next weekend, the factory could be a ghost-town - if anyone can get a job with another team.

The Ferrari blogger was right: in the rush to fill up the grid, Moseley put together a plan that ensured four classes of team:

Class One: Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull, Mercedes, Torro Rosso: established teams with sufficient budgets

Class Two: Renault, Sauber, Force India, Williams - established teams with just enough or almost enough - Williams is on the borders of the two classes but its sponsorship with RBS, although said to be firm, is still under threat as the bank has declared another spectacular loss this week and the British government, which owns more than 80% of the bank might soon decide that it might get away with claiming crown immunity if it pulls out. And with all the will in the world, Force India's finances are all in the hands of one man - who has seen his airline in deep trouble and his brewing empire performing below expectations.

Class Three: Lotus, Virgin - new (no matter how hard we wish, Lotus is in truth a new team) - who knows what the budgets are and who will stand them: these are the two teams the Ferrari blog said were scrabbling for the funds to get to the grid. There is, however, no doubt they will make it. The big question for them will be whether they can find the support to keep going.

Class Four: new and little or no chance of getting to the first race: Campos and F1GP. These are the teams the Ferrari blog said were no hopers. Campos says it will be there, but the reality is that it's still open to Dallara to say it won't release the chassis unless it gets a bucket of cash.

That, readers will remember, is effectively what happened to all the cars in the A1GP series: they were held pending payment of outstanding debt and the series has failed to appear at all this season.

But there are already two winners this season: Mercedes who will power four teams teams - and Cosworth which will power more than half the grid. Williams, Lotus, Campos, US F1 (if they make it) and Virgin. Renault and Ferrari will power just two. Hopefuls Stefan have bought the Toyota engine that the team had been developing before its precipitous pull out last year. Stefan also bought the rest of the mostly-developed Toyota but the dream of a Brawn-like start to 2010 is an unfulfilled dream - unless US F1 collapse and the FIA takes them in at the last moment - or, as someone has suggested, Stefan throw just a little more money at their objective and buy US F1's grid slot - although how that would work given the FIA's demands that it approves ownership changes remains to be seen.