Force India owner Vijay Mallya is confident that Bernie Ecclestone will address the financial issues facing the midfield teams after they discussed F1’s financial problems today.
Mallya and Sauber’s Monisha Kaltenborn met with Ecclestone this afternoon, and Bernie agreed that he has to take a look at the distribution of money between the teams – which is heavily weighted towards Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull, McLaren and Williams after they all signed individual deals when the last Concorde Agreement ran out.
“What is good is that he readily agreed that the pattern of distribution of F1 funds was disproportionate and skewed too heavily towards the big teams,” Mallya told this writer. “He said he’d do whatever he needs to do to try and fix it. He’s willing to look at changing things, and he needs to get CVC to agree. Basically, some past mistakes have come home to roost, and it needs to be fixed.
“The concept now is the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We’re all racing on the same race track, in the same championship, why should these larger teams grab a major share of the revenue? What’s the justification?
“Either the commercial rights holder has to put in more money, or the distribution model has to change. That’s something that Bernie need to take the initiative on. What he says is if he could he’d just tear up all the contracts, but he’s worried hell get sued! But I think he can find a way.”
Adam Cooper F1 
Unless CVC is taking less revenue out of the sport, then this is hardly a “real” fix.
Ecclestone just conveniently setting the big teams and the little teams back against each other.
I suspect something will change this time. Or maybe it’s just that I hope it will … hopefully nothing overly dramatic but a reasonable change in the distribution makes sense. There aren’t a ton of organizations capable of competing in F1 not only technically but more important financially, so the sport should take steps to ensure that organizations on the cusp get the small bit of help they need. The top teams could give up proportionally very little and have a huge impact on the sustainability of the sport.
I never much liked any of the new teams, but it’s painfully obvious that the current distribution simply doesn’t work.