Ferrari. For 50 years getting special treatment in Formula One and the minute there is talk of taking that away, there are toys flying out of the pram in every single direction. They are the real problem in the sport and there's no doubt the leaders behind this threat of a breakaway from next year onwards. But how will that work? The simple answer is it won't.

You can only have one governing body and if the Formula One teams go down this route of setting up their own championship, for a start they won't be able to call it formula one. The second thing is, once money starts flying around they will start falling out with each other because there's no governing body. Ferrari are leading the other teams on and are reacting to the idea of a budget cap like a group of spoiled children. They might have a bottomless pit of money and think it's okay if things are not competitive as long as they are winning but we in the FIA don't. For new teams to come into formula one they need to reduce the budgets.

I don't think it's an idle threat but I can't see them going through with this either. You have to see that there are two groups here. The teams and then there's the manufacturers. The latter are very quiet. The teams are protecting their patch. They don't want more manufacturers in the sport. There is a lot of greed there and they want everything from these exclusive television deals for themselves.

The manufacturers have been a little slow on seeing what's going on but eventually they will. I can't see how manufacturers, take for example Mercedes, can let people go from their factories because they are not selling enough cars and then refuse to have a budget cap in formula one. It's not moral. It's not ethical. It's not right. And they will have to stop blindly following Ferrari at some point. So I'm pretty sure the manufactures are going to want to be seen going along with some budget cap.

I see the teams are also attacking Max Mosley over the fact the FIA are going to sue. But Max Mosley is only one of a number of people in the FIA responsible for governing formula one. It seems people target Mosley individually. They obviously feel there is a certain weakness there given his age and the fact he promised he was going to retire in October. They feel to attack him results in them getting their own way. It's not a fair representation of the FIA.

What's sad is, the budget cap is almost irrelevant in that how do you count how much money someone spends in the sport? If Ferrari still want to spent €400m, how do you stop them doing that? It's not really about a budget cap, it's about control of the sport. The fact is the teams are in it for themselves, the FIA are in it for the sport and who would you prefer to have running the sport? There's no contest.

But there won't be a breakaway sport next season or any other. It won't come to that. It never does. These things always end in a compromise and that's what will happen here.

Alex Sinclair is chief executive of Motorsport Ireland, a member of the FIA

In conversation with Ewan MacKenna