"The subject of the money split in F1 and the financial struggles of the smaller teams has been central to this season and it seems they might finally have made a breakthrough in their demands to be given more financial assistance. There was a meeting here at Yas Marina between the Lotus, Sauber and Force India teams, F1 commercial boss Bernie Ecclestone, and the man really in charge, Donald MacKenzie, co-chairman of CVC Capital Partners.

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"Ecclestone has flip-flopped on the issue in his public remarks in recent weeks, variously saying he was to blame for the situation, the small teams needed help and that they were 'beggars'. But after the meeting, Lotus team owner Gerard Lopez said: 'Both Bernie and CVC realise that they need to take action.

"We are not going to go into the details of what they are discussing but for sure they are going to go away and look at a number of things. We now need to face this issue not just as the commercial rights holder, CVC and us - but we know need to include the bigger teams to take up certain responsibility for what is going on right now, come to [the] table and participate in solving those problems. Both agree that there is an issue now, both agree that we are not beggars, we are reasonable and sensible, and both agree it can be solved.'

"He added that the concepts of the top teams selling customer cars to the smaller teams, or the top teams running third cars themselves, had been dismissed. 'We have managed to prove that financially speaking it is not an improvement,' Lopez said. 'If you have to pay more, then the cost of buying a car is more than building your own one.'"