It has been a right old couple of weeks in the world of Formula 1 politics, where, at one stage none of the current teams except Williams were going to enter the 2010 championship. Now, with the Friday May 29th deadline gone, the 2010 season has an abundance of entries.

Before looking at these new ‘private’ non-manufacturer backed teams, it’s time to summarise exactly what Ferrari, Brawn, McLaren and co have been getting upset over. Dubbed as ‘2010gate’ the situation has been stalemate with the main issue being the budget capping idea, championed by Mr Max Mosley. First he proposed a €30million budget cap for all teams, then €40million, but with motor homes and driver salaries not being included. To put this in context, the Force India team currently operates with a budget of around €50million and Toro Rosso had a budget of €130million in 2008. You can only imagine the daunting task of for teams such as McLaren and Ferrari who have budgets in the hundreds of millions per season, trying to even contemplate how they could spend such “little” money.

Further to the proposed budget cap, Mosley also introduced the idea that those teams that do adhere to the cap will have far greater technical freedom than those that chose not cap their budgets. This provoked further arguments from the Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) not being happy with the idea of a two-tier championship with cars racing against each other under different sets of rules.

With the deadline now gone, it turns out that all the current F1 teams have submitted their entries for next season’s championship, but it’s not as simple as that. Their entries are conditional. The condition being that Max and his band of FIA people agree to a budget cap of €100million for 2010, with the aim to reduce this to €45million in 2011. Seems like a fair idea, given the sheer scale of the budget cutting involved for the big spenders to adjust from over their current spend of €300million per year. If the FIA don’t accept this condition then it’s anyone’s guess what will happen.

If Badger had baked a pie of possibility it would show that more than likely the FOTA teams have called Mosley’s bluff, he simply couldn’t exclude all the current teams from next year…that would be ridiculous, but then this is F1’s off-track action and it has been ridiculous in the past…hmm.

It’s worth pointing out that Williams will be in 2010 because they split from FOTA’s ambitions to challenge the FIA and signed up to next year regardless of the budget cap being raised. They are not the only ones either – the FIA has confirmed that they have received entries from Campos, Lola, USF1 and Aston Martin (under the name of Prodrive).

USF1 is the team that’s going against the grain of established F1 teams by basing themselves over the pond in North Carolina in the US. Headed up by current SpeedTV and F1 Racing GP Editor Peter Windsor and his friend Ken Anderson. Both have history in F1 with Anderson working with Ligier and Windsor working with Williams and Ferrari. They have said how they’d like to have some homegrown drivers in the cockpit, sadly rumours of Danica Patrick joining the team and giving F1 the woman’s touch are unfounded. She apparently hung up the phone on Bernie Ecclestone when he said that “women should be dressed in white to match all the other household appliances” – typical Bernie then, managing to alienate those around him.

Campos are a Spanish Formula 3 team and were the first of the non-current teams to lodge an entry. They are going to need some serious investment and hard work to make the transition from F3 to F1 work and who knows, if they look good and Renault bow out of F1 then Alonso could be driving for them…being Spanish an all.

Lola has a chequered history with Formula 1, and that doesn’t mean they’ve seen plenty of chequered flags, they haven’t seen many at all. 1997 was the last time the team appeared in F1, albeit only for one grand prix and they failed to even qualify for that. Needless to say, that did very little for the careers of their drivers – Riccardo Rosset and Vincenzo Sospiri. Of course, things have changed since then and Lola did have a more glorious history in F1 in previous years and 2010 could see their return.

Finally, there’s Prodrive, which will be known as Aston Martin F1. Now, this is the Badger’s favourite new entry – it would be fantastic to have the classic British marques back in F1 racing and David Richards, who heads up Prodrive’s operations is a good chap and well respected in F1. He ran BAR until 2004, before Honda bought the outfit and back then BAR weren’t too shoddy. Jenson Button was 3rd in the championship that year, with the all-conquering Ferrari team in the midst of Michael Schumacher’s decade of dominance being better. Barrichello was the second place driver in 2004 and ironically, the F1 veteran once again finds himself in the leading car and once again he’s looking like coming second once again. Back to Aston Martin, the team has managed to lodge its entry after confirming a backing from “Dar” – an eastern financial group, good news and we wait to see the car’s livery – it has to be British racing green doesn’t it?

For now, this will be the end for current dispute over the 2010 season, with the FIA to confirm its list of entrants on June 12th. The limit is 13 teams, so either one of the proposed new entries won’t get through or one of the current teams will ‘do a Honda’ – most likely Toyota or Renault who both been hinting at a possible pull-out.

What do you make of all this 2010 season talk of new teams and budget caps, what will Max and the FIA do?

As far as the Badger is concerned, we’re looking forward to next weekend when the F1 focus is back on the current season rather than next year. Turkey is a great track and should deliver a more action packed race than Monaco.