The drivers are not going to go on strike, but they sure are upset about the FIA drastically increasing what they must pay annually for their F-1 super license.
“Of course not!” Mark Webber said when I asked him if 20 individualistic drivers would ever all agree to a strike. “It is like the teams who can never agree on things. We couldn’t organize a drinking party in a brewery, so we are not going to organize any strike.”
This year, the FIA charges the drivers a base fee of 10,000 euros [$15,560] plus 2,000 euros [$3,112] per point scored this season.
Previously, it was 1,725 euros [$2,684] plus 456 [$710] for each point. Based on the new system, Kimi Raikkonen would have had to fork out $357,944 in 2007.

“It is like the teams who can never agree on things. We couldn’t organize a drinking party in a brewery, so we are not going to organize any strike.”

— Mark Webber

The FIA says that the extra money will be spent increasing F-1 safety.
Talk of a strike got blown out of proportion, but the drivers were still angry.
“It has to be agreed between us that it is not fair that from one year to the next it [the cost] increases 500-600 percent,” Fernando Alonso said. “It is something we need to look at. I don’t know what will be the solution and what will be our effort, but if there is a strike in Silverstone, then maybe it is one possibility.”
Lewis Hamilton said that while he isn’t a member of the Grand Prix Drivers Ass’n [GPDA] that he still backed his fellow drivers. He later issued a statement saying he would not support a strike.
“I am not involved in any strike talks. That is not my position,” he said. “I am here to race, to do my job for the team, for myself and for the fans of F-1.”
FIA President Max Mosley sent the drivers a letter June 6 saying he was willing to meet with them to discuss the issue. So far, the drivers have not responded, but members of the GPDA do plan to meet with him to settle things privately.
GPDA director Webber, however, wants nothing to do with the disgraced Mosley.
“I am not really that interested in going to see him about anything,” said Webber, who added it was unlikely that a solution could be found.
The only time F-1 drivers ever pulled off a strike was at the 1982 South African Grand Prix where the argument was, ironically, about super licenses.
All this talk took place at the track in the unpopular Nevers/Magny-Cours region 170 miles south of Paris where, a year ago, Bernie Ecclestone said that the French Grand Prix would never return.
While the race got a one-year stay of execution, Ecclestone insisted that 2008 will definitely be the final edition because he wants a Grand Prix near Paris.
Yet, the organizers of the Magny-Cours race were showing off architectural renderings of completely revamped circuit facilities, including new grandstands, pit complex and press room. The local governments in the area and the organizers apparently are willing to pour $46 million into the project.
This includes plans to improve the hotel situation in the area, but just how was not made clear. The dire lack of hotels anywhere near the track [and the high prices charged by the few, mostly seedy, hotels available] has always been a huge problem at Magny-Cours. Yet, it makes no business sense to build more hotels for a region that is sleepily remote for 51 weeks a year.
The FFSA, the governing body of French motorsport and the event organizer, planned to meet this week to discuss the race’s future. I expect the race will be back at Magny-Cours in 2009.