WHEN the initial impasse between the Formula One Teams Association (Fota) and the FIA began, I wasn't particularly worried.
Over the past decade we have seen many such power struggles, with various high-powered individuals jostling to exert greater influence over the sport.
This time, however, I am worried. Neither FIA boss Max Mosley nor the eight most influential teams, led by Ferrari, seem able to come to a compromise.
It could end up with the entire sport spinning out of control and wrecking itself against the barriers.
I also suspect that one man, who has stayed remarkably quiet thus far, may well become an unlikely peacemaker - Bernie Ecclestone.
Forget the notion of cost-savings for a moment.
This is simply a battle for control. On one hand the teams are demanding a greater say in the way the sport is being run. One the other hand, Mosley is battling to maintain his monopoly of power.
The FIA set a deadline of yesterday evening, on the eve of the British Grand Prix, for the teams to withdraw conditions attached to their entries to the 2010 championship.
Mosley is determined to force through cost-cutting regulations, which the teams say are unattainable in the short term.
Five teams - Brawn, BMW-Sauber, McLaren, Renault and Toyota - signed up provisionally to the 2010 FIA Championship only on the basis that they run to the current rules. As things stand, if the five teams do not withdraw their conditional entries, the FIA is set to deem them inadmissible and then replace them with new entrants.
On Thursday evening, at the Renault team headquarters at Enstone near Silverstone, there was another level added to the rhetoric.
A statement from the eight members of Fota - Ferrari, Red Bull, Brawn, Renault, BMW, Toyota, Toro Rosso and McLaren - announced that they will 'commence the preparation for a new Championship', in other words create a breakaway series.
It is the scenario I most dreaded happening. History shows that such a move could tear the sport apart.
The new series, even with Ferrari and McLaren, cannot call itself the Formula One World Championship.
Meanwhile the FIA, which owns the rights to the official World Championship, will have Force India, Williams and a handful of wannabes making up the numbers.
The precedent that worries me most is what happened a few years ago in the USA. Back in the 1990s, the Cart Indy Car motor racing scene was as big as F1.
All-American legends such as A. J. Foyt and Mario Andretti were front-page news when they won the Indianapolis 500, the sport's premier event. Meanwhile 'imported' world champions such as Nigel Mansell and Emerson Fittipaldi earned more as Indycar champions than they ever did in Grand Prix.
Then two factions in the sport argued, fought and split. It became two series, the IndyCar series and ChampCar. The spectacle diminished. TV viewers, spectators and the money all moved elsewhere.
The two championships merged again in 2007, but now they are a pale shadow of what they once were. So where do we go from here?
I suspect that Silverstone this weekend will be a hotbed of argument and discussion. I also believe that there may still be room for compromise. We might even tear our attention away for long enough to stage a motor race.
I also suspect that one man, who has stayed rather quiet thus far, may well become an unlikely peacemaker - Bernie Ecclestone.
It is his company, Formula One Management, which holds the commercial deals, not just with the FIA and the teams, but with the tracks that host the World Championship.
Many of the tracks and race promoters have contracts with Bernie that would allow them to renegotiate if top teams such as Ferrari and McLaren are not present in the 'official' 2010 Championship.
In other words, he has a vested interest, money, in keeping the factions around the negotiating table.
I hope that this may yet be seen in retrospect as yet another game of brinkmanship and that peace might yet break out between the factions at Silverstone. It needs to.
Most race fans are getting heartily sick of politics, compromises, power struggles, budget caps and Concorde agreements.
What they want to see are the best drivers in the world, racing the best cars in the world, on the best tracks in the world. If not, they will simply tune in to another sport. Bernie, Max and the teams, please take note.
