Ferrari - worried other teams could leave.

Ferrari has launched an attack on the sport's governing body, the FIA, as French manufacturer Renault discusses its future in the sport.

The Italian team, the oldest in the sport, has hit out against what it sees as a perceived bias against manufacturers under the leadership of former FIA president Max Mosley.

Bosses at Maranello fear Renault will go the same way as other teams such as Toyota who quit the sport on Wednesday.

This follows the loss to the sport of Honda and BMW and the news that Bridgestone will no longer be official tyre supplier to F1 when its current contract runs out at the end of next season.

In a statement released on its website, Ferrari compared the sport to the Agatha Christie detective novel 'Ten Little Indians' in which the murderer is not exposed until after the other characters have been killed off.

The statement read: "It could be seen as a parody of "Ten Little Indians," the detective novel by Agatha Christie, first published in England back in 1939, but the reality is much more serious.

"Formula 1 continues to lose major players: in the past twelve months, Honda, BMW, Bridgestone and, only this morning, Toyota, have announced they are leaving the sport.

"In exchange, so to speak, we will now have, Manor, Lotus (at least in name only, as this incarnation has little to do with the team that gave us Colin Chapman, Jim Clark and Ayrton Senna to name but a few,) USF1 and Campos Meta.

"Can we claim that it's a case of like for like, just because the numbers sitting around the table are the same? Hardly and we must also wait and see just how many of them will really be there on the grid for the first race of next season in Bahrain and how many will still be there at the end of 2010.

"The reality is that this gradual defection from the F1 fold has more to do with a war waged against the major car manufacturers by those who managed Formula 1 over the past few years, than the result of any economic crisis.

"In Christie's work of fiction, the guilty party was only uncovered when all the other characters died, one after the other. Do we want to wait for this to happen or do we want to pen a different ending to the book on Formula 1?"

Ferrari must hope that its former team principal, Jean Todt, who has succeeded Mosley as FIA president, enjoys a less strained working relationship with the teams than his predecessor.