Teams are negotiating with Bernie Ecclestone over the terms of the Concorde Agreement

The teams are negotiating with F1 chief Bernie Ecclestone over the terms of the Concorde Agreement, which commits them to race and specifies that they share 50 per cent of the sport’s profits as prize money. The teams are believed to want 75 per cent, but Ecclestone is unlikely to give ground. He told the Daily Express that, in fact, his business could get a boost if no new contract is signed. “I don’t even care if we don’t have a Concorde Agreement. It makes no difference to us,” he said. “What we might do is run the championship and ask the teams for money to enter.” Ecclestone’s business levies no charge on the teams to race in F1 and their only direct costs of getting a grid slot are registration and entry fees, which come to about £500,000 per outfit – which are paid to the sport’s governing body the FIA, not to Ecclestone’s company CVC, where he is chief executive officer.

I don’t even care if we don’t have a Concorde Agreement Bernie Ecclestone

Once the Concorde Agreement expires, Ecclestone could introduce the racing fees from 2013 without needing consent from the teams and he says the benefit to him is simply that “it would put more money in our bank.” He added: “If I want to enter a horse in the Derby, I pay a whacking great entry fee.” The current agreement was signed in August 2009, nearly two years after the previous draft expired and Ecclestone said that, as is the case in other sports, it could cost the teams if they delay. “If you are late with an entry in the Derby, you have to pay a chunk of money to enter the horse,” he said. His comments up the ante against the teams. The top four, Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull, are believed to have met in Stuttgart over the weekend to discuss the negotiations with Ecclestone, as well as the possibility of F1 being taken over by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp media empire and the Exor investment fund. Since then, CVC Capital, has said that it is not for sale.

It is believed that the move was to exert pressure on Ecclestone in the Concorde negotiations. Exor owns 30.4 per cent of Italian car manufacturer Fiat which, in turn, owns 90 per cent of Ferrari, and it has been particularly vocal about how it wants F1 to change. Earlier this month, Ferrari’s team principal Stefano Domenicali said that CVC “must invest in F1 and develop ”. This was followed by comments from Ferrari’s president Luca di Montezemolo, who added that, if the teams fail to agree on the Concorde terms, they could “create our own company, like NBA basketball teams did in the US with great success, just to run races, TV rights and so on”.