Ecclestone brokers deal to keep team racing
Published: January 23 2009 23:20 | Last updated: January 23 2009 23:20
Bernie Ecclestone, Formula One commercial director, has revealed that he advanced the struggling Williams team £14.5m after it committed to stay in the sport, write Christian Sylt and Caroline Reid.
Williams has made a loss of £50m over the past two years but the boost from Mr Ecclestone has helped the team get its budget in place until the end of 2010.
A total of £130m has been set aside as an incentive for F1’s nine teams to sign the Concorde Agreement, the contract that binds them to race in F1 but which expired at the end of 2007.
The teams now race in F1 under a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreed in 2006 with CVC, the private equity group that has majority control of F1, but this is not legally binding.
The MOU increased the teams’ annual prize money from 25 per cent to 50 per cent of the sport’s underlying profits and these payments began last year. But the teams have not signed a new contract, prompting Mr Ecclestone to say: “We have no contract and no invoice so why are we paying them?”
CVC offered the teams a signing bonus, comprising the difference between the old and the increased prize money backdated from 2004-07 and estimated at £130m, subject to the signing of a new Concorde Agreement, which CVC needs if it wants to withdraw from the business.
Williams, however, has already received its share of the money from 2006 and 2007. “It’s a prepayment,” says Mr Ecclestone. “They are entitled to some back-payments only due for payment when they sign the Concorde . . . we said to them we will pay you now.”
The back-dated payments represent about 20 per cent of Williams’ revenues and will have helped the team get its budget in place in spite of losing sponsors.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited
http://www.4wdmedia.de/service/ical-kalender.htmlDann bin ich mal gespannt, aber vorher kommt noch das Formel 1 Jahr 2009. Wisst ihr vielleicht ob es im Netz schon was für iCal-Abonement gibt?
some good news for F1 TV viewers
January 29, 2009 by speedmerchants
Yesterday I wrote about some things we will not be seeing on TV, today I’m posting on a couple of things which will be in the show, although I’m not sure about one of them.
Radio conversations between team and driver have been available for a few years, but the team had a button it needed to press to make the channel open to the TV director. Renault were always very good and open about this, even though it used to irritate them that the director kept playing clips of them telling Fisi to push harder. Ferrari and McLaren were useless at opening the line, and would simply open it at the end, after a victory for some stage managed gushing. This season the radios will be open all the time from every team, so you should hear some much more insightful stuff and get a feel for how the big names come across on radio in the heat of battle.
The other thing I’m not so keen on. I’m told that the teams and the FIA are seriously planning to publish the weights of the cars after qualifying. If this is true I think it is mad as it takes away from the suspense of the opening part of the race and might make teams inclined to do more or less the same thing on fuel strategy as each other, which will create more of a procession.
One of the reasons qualifying with fuel has worked was because there was the chance to go short or long and we couldn’t be absolutely sure, because there was always that margin for driver error.
Also it will devalue the pole before the race has even started if say, Kubica has achieved it by running six laps less fuel than Hamilton and Massa. We’ll all stand on the grid saying, “So what?”
I hope that this change does not come about. The new mood of openess in F1 is good, but this is one step too many for me.
Gute Frage.Wann können wir endlich wieder richtiges Qualifying sehen? Wo der pole sitter die Pole auch verdient hat.
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