The big teams do not want to make sacrifices on their revenue

While several F1 teams are experiencing financial difficulties at the moment—starting with Caterham and Marussia, who are under administration and missed the United States Grand Prix and are expected to miss the Brazil Grand Prix—the bigger teams are reluctant to offer a more equitable sharing of revenue.

If Bernie Ecclestone stated that the leading teams should make financial sacrifices to help those with fewer resources, it does not seem easy to achieve.

Asked by Autosport, Christian Horner believes that a better revenue sharing wouldn’t change much: « It’s very kind of Bernie to suggest that. Each team has negotiated its contract with the commercial rights holder, and I think it’s a problem that should be addressed to them regarding the distribution of money. We have signed agreements, and I’m not convinced that even if you double Caterham and Marussia’s money, it will solve their problems. »

The director of Red Bull Racing team believes that F1 owner CVC should be involved in helping smaller teams by giving a larger share of its profits: « We have enormous budget pressures, and I have to manage things within the limits of our budget. If the commercial rights holder wants to give more money to smaller teams, then it’s their choice and responsibility. Teams are there to compete, not to sponsor each other. »

The director of Scuderia Ferrari, Marco Mattiacci, has a quite similar vision. For him, there’s no need to change the revenue distribution but simply work on increasing the revenues: Ferrari is very focused on making the pie bigger and not changing the way the pie is cut. We must not overreact. We need to study how to increase revenues, that’s priority number one. The second is to ensure that those who come to F1 are aware of the challenge of F1. This sport is based on innovation, and innovation costs money, a lot of investments, a long-term investment.

The head of competition at Mercedes, Toto Wolff, nevertheless believes that Bernie Ecclestone shares some of the responsibility: “We know why we got to this point. It was important for Bernie to sign with the leading teams, who are the main players in Formula 1. Today, we find ourselves in a situation that is not good because two of the new small teams have left and some others are suffering.”

But the Austrian believes that the biggest F1 teams should listen to the proposals of the FOM boss if he thinks he can change things: « It’s a problem for the teams that needs to be discussed with Bernie. He’s the one who initiated things, and if the leading teams want to do something, then I think we should sit down at a table and discuss it. As Mercedes, we don’t think we are the main target because we are far from what some teams receive, so we will see what Bernie brings. »

This weekend in Austin, three teams – Lotus, Force India, and Sauber – threatened to boycott the race but ultimately decided to participate after CVC co-founder Donald MacKenzie promised to resolve the issue, with or without the help of Bernie Ecclestone.

MacKenzie acknowledges that it is unlikely the largest teams will be willing to reduce their income to help the smaller teams. However, he believes he has a solution by suggesting a small portion of F1’s revenues intended for CVC could be redistributed among the smaller teams. Even if this approach seems surprising, it is in CVC’s interest to maintain an F1 with a certain number of teams and cars on the grid to preserve the value of F1 in case a sale occurs, which seems to have been in the works for some time now.

According to *The F1 Times*, the three teams previously mentioned may be tempted to carry out their threat of boycotting Abu Dhabi for the season’s final race if no agreement is reached before the Brazilian GP this weekend.