Give us money or we quit - Minardi

Minardi may announce their withdrawal from formula one this weekend unless Paul Stoddart persuades rival team owners to release a £9m payment to enable his team to continue to the end of the season.

The teams will meet in the paddock here this afternoon after the first free-practice session for Sunday's European grand prix. For the Minardi drivers Mark Webber and Alex Yoong, this could be their final race of the year.

Stoddart believes Minardi should receive the benefits originally earmarked for the Prost team until they went bankrupt in January.

Teams finishing in the top 10 in the constructors' championship are awarded revenue from television income. Prost came 10th last season and Minardi 11th. But with Prost no longer in the picture Minardi are hoping to be awarded the money, although it is believed that some rival team principals, including McLaren's Ron Dennis and Arrows' Tom Walkinshaw, are not of the same opinion.

"If I come out of the meeting knowing we will be paid then I will be able to make the announcement I had hoped to make today, that Minardi will continue for the rest of the year," said Stoddart.

"But if I am shafted I will have a different opinion. I am not someone who cries wolf. The decision will have to be made one way or another.

"It will not be just on the monetary value but whether or not we have been shafted. And if we have been shafted then I want no part of this paddock."

Stoddart hopes that requests from the FIA president Max Mosley for the television income due to Prost to be released to Minardi will be persuasive.