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Updated at 5:10 a.m., Sunday, November 9, 2008

Auto racing: F1 teams to reduce engine costs by $19 million

Associated Press

SCARPERIA, Italy — Formula One teams have unanimously agreed to reduce engine costs by more than $19 million by 2011, Ferrari chairman Luca Cordero di Montezemolo said Sunday.

Montezemolo recently presided over a meeting of the newly founded Formula One Teams Association, or FOTA.

"We are working with all the teams to reduce costs even more for 2010 and 2011," Montezemolo said at Ferrari's end-of-season celebration. "We unanimously decided that by 2011 an engine will cost $6.4 million, compared to the more than $25.5 million they used to cost."

Auto racing governing body FIA recently announced it was moving forward with plans to have a sole engine and transmission supplier beginning in 2010, a move which prompted Ferrari to threaten pulling out of F1 if the plans went ahead.

Ferrari believes the move would eliminate the essence of a sport based on competition and technological development.

"It's unthinkable that constructors like Ferrari, Toyota, Mercedes, Honda, Renault and BMW would accept putting their label on a machine with an engine made by someone else," Montezemolo said, according to the ANSA news agency. "The purpose of F1 is that investments in innovation, research and development reverberate in industrial production."