The hopes of Formula One’s impoverished teams have been placed in the hands of someone Donald Mackenzie, chairman of the sport’s controlling shareholders, can understand: a money man.
Gerard Lopez, the Lotus team principal and founder of Genii Capital, the Luxembourg-based investment company behind the team, has entered into direct negotiations with the publicity-shy Mackenzie.
Mackenzie, the chairman of CVC Capital Partners, called Lopez in Austin to avert the threatened boycott of the United States Grand Prix and talks are ongoing over a possible £100 million windfall.
However, the three rebellious teams – Force India, Lotus and Sauber – have indicated that a one-off payment will not be sufficient to appease them. They want a greater share of F1’s £500 million of prize money.
“We have left the negotiations to Gerard,” a source said. “Gerard and Donald speak the same language.” Lopez, a graduate of Miami University’s management school, is chairman of two investment firms and was an early backer of Skype, the video call service.
If the small teams, incensed at the demise of Caterham and Marussia, want a greater slice of the pie, then the big beasts of the sport are refusing to give up some of their share.
Christian Horner, the boss of Red Bull, a team which received around £100 million in prize money last year while Marussia got just £6 million, said he doubted the two minnows would have survived even had they received double their current income.
Horner said: “I am not convinced that even if you double the money to Caterham and Marussia it would have solved their issues, which are more fundamental on what are the cost drivers rather than what is the income. The way the pie is distributed is not a question for the teams.”
Just as F1’s financial crisis deepens, the engine manufacturers are in the midst of a row which could see spending rise even further. It is over whether the rules which dictate how much the engine can be developed should be relaxed, to give Renault and Ferrari the opportunity to catch up with Mercedes.
Although it could see costs on the already expensive engines go up, the smaller customers teams have been told that any rise will not be passed on to them.
Toto Wolff, the Mercedes motorsport boss, said in Austin: “If this is the compromise needed to guarantee long-term stability and agree long term we are not going to change the rules every year, that is something we will look at.
"What we have said is we are calculating that, and we are looking at the effect of it. What does it mean financially? What does it mean logistically?”
0 comments:
Post a Comment