Dennis: Minardi Not Entitled to TV Money

McLaren boss Ron Dennis said on Sunday that the Minardi team are not entitled to the £12 million in television revenue they are claiming and insisted they have no legal right to the money.

Minardi owner Paul Stoddart believes his team are entitled to the funding following the collapse of the Prost Grand Prix team last year, on the grounds that they have finished 10th in the Championship two years in succession.

The Anglo-Italian outfit were classified 11th last year, but Stoddart claims that the collapse of Prost, who had finished ninth, moved his team up to 10th, although Dennis is one of many who disagree.

"The provisions that relate to this matter ultimately carry arbitration and there are a quantity of teams, and I am most firmly in that can, who do believe strongly that Minardi has no legal right to the funds they claim they have rights to," Dennis said.

"Oversimplifying the issue, their argument is made on that basis that because Prost are not competing there is a promotion from 11th to 10th and that ninth doesn't exist.

"It is a little bit like if you have an athletics race and someone is disqualified in that situation everybody moves up but if the guy that is third who won the bronze medal dies he has still won the bronze medal.

"It doesn't mean to say that everybody moves up and whilst I have said before that it is an oversimplification of the issue it is the nub of the issue."

Dennis insisted that McLaren are one of a number of teams opposing Stoddart's view because he is hanging his argument on a section of the Concorde Agreement, which was re-written to act when two teams are tied for 10th.

"The simple fact is Minardi did not finish in the top-ten two consecutive years and the two relevant clauses on which he is hanging his argument relate to the mechanism which is used to determine if there is two teams that have exactly the same criteria and come joint 10th," he added.

"That happened once and we suddenly realised there were two teams that had exactly the same points, finishing position, they were equal and we had two 10th places and we re-wrote part of the Concorde Agreement to devise a mechanism for determining how that was handled.

"In those cases, the supplement to the Concorde Agreement is being used by Minardi to try to attempt to claim that they are 10th when in reality they are still 11th."

Dennis admitted that arbitration could prove irrelevant because the fate of the cash-strapped Minardi team, which will need Stoddart to fund losses to get to the end of the season without the television funds, could be sealed before then.

He said: "Everybody is very happy to go through the arbitration process and abide by it, but obviously the timing is not persistent with the needs of Minardi."