At least one team are threatening to pull out of Formula One if the sport goes ahead with a “one engine fits all” plan to curb spiralling costs and increase competition. Nick Fry, the chief executive of Honda Racing, said yesterday: “If you are talking about a standard engine, as in one that is identical and made by another manufacturer and they are all the same, we are very much opposed to that.”

The Times disclosed yesterday that Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One's commercial rights holder, and Max Mosley, the president of the FIA, believe that within two years all teams should use one standard specification engine that they can either manufacture or buy from an independent contractor. This, and an equally radical proposal that each car will use only two engines per season, could cut engine and gearbox budgets, which run into tens of millions of pounds per year, by up to 90 per cent. Mosley is to hold crisis talks with the teams on ways to cut costs after the Chinese Grand Prix in nine days' time.

Dr Mario Theissen, the director of BMW Motorsport, was also critical of Ecclestone's idea. “A standard engine is something we don't like,” Theissen said. “I think there are other measures to make sure that costs go down.”

Theissen and Fry agree that further standardisation of parts is possible and desirable in the cause of cutting costs, “although not necessarily standardisation of the entire power train as it would be difficult to justify for manufacturers to be there,” Theissen said.