Concorde agreement and teams finances

[Marbot]

Pay drivers are never a good sign of a team having more money than sense. That, and the cost of the new 2014 engines for customer teams, will see some having a real think about how they're going to go forwards from here. How much effort do we put into a 2014 chassis, if we're not totally convinced of where the money is going to come from for the bit that pushes it along?

[wolfhound]

There are only 5 teams who do not have drivers bringing money with them (including Enstone and I am not sure about Grosjean). Of the rest I don't think Di Resta, Bottas and Hulkenberg bring any backing with them. That means 50% of the grid has drivers bringing money to the team.

What also seems to have changed in recent times is the amounts of the budget drivers bring to the team, Maldonado has backing in the region of 30 million I believe. If the numbers continue to not add up I wonder how long will it be before we loose some more teams.

[csirl]

Originally Posted by Marbot

The teams now have a 63% share of television rights, and have all now signed up to the Concorde agreement.

Some day the penny will drop with the teams that they could divide 100% share of the television rights between themselves and simply pay a fee of a few hundred thousand dollars each to fund an office, led by a CEO/Commissioner type character, to run the sport on their behalf.

[Marbot]

Originally Posted by csirl

Some day the penny will drop with the teams that they could divide 100% share of the television rights between themselves and simply pay a fee of a few hundred thousand dollars each to fund an office, led by a CEO/Commissioner type character, to run the sport on their behalf.

Maybe. But is 100% of someone elses business model better than 63% of the BE/CVC business model?

The one thing that BE has guaranteed is that there are no shortage of races wanting to come onboard, even at the rates being asked. Put someone in there who does not have BEs reputation for being a hard nosed character to deal with, and you'll have prices tumbling before you know it, and less to be shared around as a consequence of that.

Better the devil you know.

[chillibowl]

Originally Posted by Marbot

Better the devil you know.

particularly when the devil you know makes you so much money.

also it sounds like any sort of formalized RRA agreement will not get support from the FIA as Todt's quotes sound like he/the FIA is either content, unwilling, or unable to get between the teams on this. or maybe the higher entry fees is the payoff for the FIA to stay out of it.

http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns24978.html

i particularly liked the symbolism of the FIA losing their shirts though!

[wolfhound]

I think the teams are foolish not to agree some form of budget restriction. Long term it just does not make sense. The teams could make a handy profit with budget restrictions, but then it is seldom you will get 2 of them to agree on anything let alone 11.

[wolfhound]

It appears that a concorde agreement is as far off as ever judging by what Dieter Rencken has to say.

http://plus.autosport.com/premium/fe...-to-f1-future/

For those who do not have access there are a number of things going on Bernie's original plan for an A/B team structure was dealth a blow with HRT going under. This involved the bigger teams selling older chassis & technology to the so called B teams. With 12 teams that left 6 and 6. However with 11 teams and Marussia refusing to go away Bernie has a problem with that plan. The advantages were for the A teams to be able to gain income from sell their old cars and B teams cost savings from having to develop new cars probably saving CVC some cash along the way.

Marussia do not have any commercial offer from Bernie at the moment but have a legal entry to the championship that means that Bernie has no right to broadcast images of their cars etc. as they are owned by Marussia.

Take that a step further if the impass lasts it could mean that Bernie is selling the TV companies something he has no rights to.

For this reason it is important to get a new deal in place but the whole structure has yet to be agreed with only the financial bits sorted for 10 teams.

There is always the possiblity of the whole thing blowing up into a major row but everybody seems to be keeping it quiet for now.

[wolfhound]

There has been a few articles in the recent past about the concorde agreement, the floating of F1 and so on.

http://plus.autosport.com/premium/fe...mbling-blocks/
http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2013/...-little-logic/

Both of them are saying much the same thing, in that there is no concorde agreement yet Bernie says the floating of F1 will go ahead. It seems like CVC would like out of F1 as they have been selling shares every so often but still have enough to keep control.
I cannot see how Bernie would want a floatation of F1 as he would almost certainly loose some of his power having to answer to a long list of shareholders. By not having a concorde agreement nobody will buy into F1 as FOM has no guaranteed control over the teams or the structure of F1. It would not surprise me that Bernie wants to buy back into F1 at a price to sell it on again.

[andy666]

Originally Posted by wolfhound

It appears that a concorde agreement is as far off as ever judging by what Dieter Rencken has to say.

http://plus.autosport.com/premium/fe...-to-f1-future/

For those who do not have access there are a number of things going on Bernie's original plan for an A/B team structure was dealth a blow with HRT going under. This involved the bigger teams selling older chassis & technology to the so called B teams. With 12 teams that left 6 and 6. However with 11 teams and Marussia refusing to go away Bernie has a problem with that plan. The advantages were for the A teams to be able to gain income from sell their old cars and B teams cost savings from having to develop new cars probably saving CVC some cash along the way.



Marussia do not have any commercial offer from Bernie at the moment but have a legal entry to the championship that means that Bernie has no right to broadcast images of their cars etc. as they are owned by Marussia.

Take that a step further if the impass lasts it could mean that Bernie is selling the TV companies something he has no rights to.


For this reason it is important to get a new deal in place but the whole structure has yet to be agreed with only the financial bits sorted for 10 teams.

There is always the possiblity of the whole thing blowing up into a major row but everybody seems to be keeping it quiet for now.

I read on the BBC F1 site that Bernie is planning to only award the top ten teams with money at the end of the season, is he hoping to push a team into bankruptcy so he can have 5 a's and 5 b's ?

[wolfhound]

Originally Posted by andy666

I read on the BBC F1 site that Bernie is planning to only award the top ten teams with money at the end of the season, is he hoping to push a team into bankruptcy so he can have 5 a's and 5 b's ?

Nothing would surprise me but the teams (excluding Red Bull Toro Rosso) have realised that any team could end up in 11th place and appear to be putting pressure on Bernie to change the situation. I think it suits Bernie to not have an agreement at the moment but not CVC if one reads between the lines.
I am not sure where the FIA stands in all this other than Bernie and Jean Todt don't see eye to eye.

I think the idea of A & B teams is dead for the moment as Williams alway want to build their own car and most of the teams have a lot of infrastructure to do the same. I could see the definition of a constructor being loosened somewhat though. Most of the cost is now on aero and reliability for the teams but how to reduce aero cost is another matter.

[Nicholosophy]

The history of F1 has had people driving around in customer cars. Of course, the history of F1 also allowed almost anyone with the finances, skills and a car to show up and race at any grands prix they wished to. Frank Williams would do well to remembr that he started out buying customer cars and then eventually moved into building his own chassis.

Many motorsport series these days are closed to new teams, or new constructors. Once upon a time a team could choose to move from F2 to F1 and have a crack. Williams, Jordan (now Force India), Toleman (Lotus), Minardi (Toro Rosso), Stewart (RBR), Tyrrell (Merc-AGM) all made the jump from lower single seater formulae, while Sauber made the jump from sportscars. It is not possible now for one of the top level GP2 teams to go to the organisers and submit an entry form for 2014 and know that they will get an entry. Bernie has already said F1 has one too many teams.

We end up in a situation where you have to buy a team to get the right to even field a car. You can't run one or two races a year to test the waters, or run a one car team to start out small. There are no non-championship F1 races to hone your skills in.

Just like drivers compete to try and make it to the pinacle, once upon a time teams did the same thing. Look at Christian Horner. Back in the day you'd have expected to see Arden come up into F1 with Christian at the helm. Instead he had to leave that team to make it into F1 with RBR because it just isn't possible to do that.

[wolfhound]

Originally Posted by NickoGP

The history of F1 has had people driving around in customer cars. Of course, the history of F1 also allowed almost anyone with the finances, skills and a car to show up and race at any grands prix they wished to. Frank Williams would do well to remembr that he started out buying customer cars and then eventually moved into building his own chassis.

Many motorsport series these days are closed to new teams, or new constructors. Once upon a time a team could choose to move from F2 to F1 and have a crack. Williams, Jordan (now Force India), Toleman (Lotus), Minardi (Toro Rosso), Stewart (RBR), Tyrrell (Merc-AGM) all made the jump from lower single seater formulae, while Sauber made the jump from sportscars. It is not possible now for one of the top level GP2 teams to go to the organisers and submit an entry form for 2014 and know that they will get an entry. Bernie has already said F1 has one too many teams.

We end up in a situation where you have to buy a team to get the right to even field a car. You can't run one or two races a year to test the waters, or run a one car team to start out small. There are no non-championship F1 races to hone your skills in.

Just like drivers compete to try and make it to the pinacle, once upon a time teams did the same thing. Look at Christian Horner. Back in the day you'd have expected to see Arden come up into F1 with Christian at the helm. Instead he had to leave that team to make it into F1 with RBR because it just isn't possible to do that.

I agree with you on all of that. The only possible route for a team to get the relevant experience of running and developing their cars at the moment is in sports cars where the regs allow different types of cars to compete with each other. Almost all of the single seater series are now spec chassis with only setup (sometimes limited) changes allowed. However getting an F1 entry is now almost impossible.