In comparison with the past few years, the politics of F1 has been pretty quiet. You could almost say peace has broken out. However, there is one issue this year that has created a lot of heat between teams - 'chassis shopping'.
As you might expect from a sport that has a constructors' championship, each team must build their own car. The chassis has to be unique, not a carbon copy of another team's that has been brought in. This rule has been maintained in F1 for decades and makes it the pinnacle of motorsport.
This season accusations have been flying that the rule has been broken. The main suspects are Scuderia Torro Rosso and Super Aguri. STR are flying closest to the wind. For many it's no more than a B team for Red Bull, and it would appear the chassis is virtually the same to the RB3. Only the fact it has a Ferrari engine in it and not a Renault one distinguishes it - and the slightly different paint job.
This year's Super Aguri is essentially last year's Honda RA106. Both are powered by Honda, and the top brass in Japan must be more than a little embarrassed to see Super Aguri ahead of their big brothers in the constructors' championship.
Frank Williams, for one, doesn't like it one bit.
'I am adamantly opposed to chassis sharing and we at Williams do not believe it is legal under current rules,' he fumed at the start of the season. The FIA believe it's OK for a third party to build chassis for more than one team, and Red Bull has created a separate company, Red Bull Technologies, to provide the goods to both them and STR.
BMW's Mario Theissen is also against the trend, claiming: 'With the sale of each chassis, I think we will very soon have 6+6 teams, or six teams with four cars each. Having just four or five big players controlling the grid in our view would not be F1 anymore'.