Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFIA

Todt tells F1 teams to stop complaining

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FIA president Jean Todt says teams should stop complaining about the distribution of funds in F1.

Bernie Ecclestone signed commercial agreements with each team individually which results in them each receiving different amounts of money from the Commercial Rights Holder. A number of the smaller teams have complained about the inequitable distribution of funds over the past year, saying the agreements are no longer fair.

Speaking to a select group of journalists including F1i in Paris, Todt - who says he will reduce the cost of the power units to customers - told the teams they only have themselves to blame for accepting the deals on offer.

"You hear teams complaining about the cost of Formula One," Todt said. "I’m a person who considers Formula One is too expensive. Saying that, Formula One now is less expensive than it was ten years ago. So Formula One is less expensive. A lot of things have been done - including by my predecessor - which were going in the right direction to reduce the costs.

"Now new agreements have been signed, and signed by everybody, incidentally. They are much more favourable to some teams than to some other teams. So we are facing people who are very happy to have signed, and we are facing people who are very unhappy to have signed. Saying that, there is a common thing: they all have signed.

“They all accepted and they were happy, at least I don’t know if they were happy but they signed. Now they are not happy."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.