By Andrew Cutler
April 10 2007

The question facing Scuderia Toro Rosso - and every other F1 team - is: is your involvement about making money, or about showing your passion for motorsports? The squad from Faenza made their stance on this very clear this past weekend: now it is time to see where their rivals are at. When rumours started circulating this past week that F3 and DTM car builder HWA were putting togeather a bid for co-owner Gerhard Berger's share of STR, the team press office lampooned the notion of the former F1 driver selling on the STR website. In recent interview with the newspaper Kleinen Zeitung, Berger reiterated his desire to stay with the team and to help it improve. "Our long term vision," he said, "is to bring this team that was once on the very last positions on the grid into a good position. Many people, including our rivals, can see that we are a team with large potential."

This is perhaps not an easy stance to understand for the average fan, who knows that STR is currently under threat of legal action over their chassis design. If things go badly for the team, they could end up losing out on WCC points and the revenues that go along with them. Of course, many people have been insisting all along that money is what this "customer car" squabble is REALLY all about.

That is what makes the latest plan from F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone on how to diffuse this situation so interesting. Spanish newspaper El Mundo Deportivo is reporting that, in a meeting later this week in Bahrain, Ecclestone will offer to broaden the cirteria for sharing of T.V. revenues in a manor so that all eleven teams will benefit, instead of only the top ten.

Looks like it will be time for certain rivals to declare whether their objection to the STR2 is a stand on principal, or a matter of economics.