Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff has said that three-car teams could be inevitable if Red Bull and Toro Rosso carry through their threat to quit the sport at the end of 2015.
"Yes, if a team would leave, and we had this discussion about Lotus a while ago, third cars are a solution to fill up the grid," Wolff said this week.
"For me personally it is a pretty exciting idea. I’d rather have Red Bull in the sport than third cars and a grid of 27 or 28 cars, and some exciting young drivers in those cars.
"But this is definitely one of the fall-back solutions," he admitted.
Wolff denied there had been any further recent talk amongst the team owners and principals about the situation or specifically about the treats by Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz to pull out of the sport if he's unable to secure a competitive engine deal for his teams for 2016 after breaking up with Renault.
"No, because I think priority number one is to keep them in the sport," insisted Wolff.
"It isn’t the best of news if a brand and a team of the pedigree of Red Bull would leave the sport – that is absolutely clear and we are very conscious about it.
"It would harm the platform and there would be bad news around it. You know how much I have fought for the positive news around Formula One, so it isn’t the best of news.
"I hope whatever decision they take they are going to decide in favour of Formula One and grow Formula One and take it from the competitive side," he added.
But Wolff admitted he had no better idea than anyone else of how serious Red Bull's threats to quit the sport actually were, and what the likelihood of it happening actually was.
"I don’t know because we have all heard the threats and I can’t judge.
"Fundamentally there is one person who will make that decision and I can’t have any opinion on that because I don’t know."
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