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F1 cost row won't get as drastic as boycott says Lotus owner Lopez

Lotus owner Gerard Lopez is confident Formula 1's cost crisis can be sorted out without a need for the small teams to do anything 'drastic'

Amid mounting frustration over the financial situation in F1, the smaller teams deliberately stirred up talk of a potential race boycott at Austin - even though they never actually threatened it.

The speculation about what they could do was enough to force Bernie Ecclestone to respond, and propose the idea of a redistribution of F1's commercial rights income.

AUTOSPORT understands the smaller teams have been asked to come up with proposals that they believe would help secure their futures and be acceptable to the bigger outfits.

Lopez is optimistic that talks scheduled with Ecclestone for the next week will result in a positive outcome and will not force the teams to consider anything as radical as not racing.

Speaking about the stories of a boycott in the United States, Lopez said: "I found out through our press officer, and then I went around who was saying what and what went on. I think some people had intended to make an even stronger point.

"But I really think there is a way to solve this in the coming days, probably even to get to a proposal before Brazil, in which case I don't see the point in doing anything drastic that would damage the sport."

Lopez believes one solution would be for an extra 'base payment' for the smaller outfits - similar to the CCB bonus payments that are given to F1's most successful outfits.

"I know CVC and Bernie have been looking at this, but it's going to be a base payment given to the smaller teams which is essentially going to make it possible for a normal budget to be pretty much closed here," he said.

"To be honest, it's really not a complicated thing to do. It just requires a bit of good will. The overall amount we're discussing, we're not talking about a half of that, a third of that, or anything like that.

"Once you start dividing it by the number of teams, it suddenly does not become that massive.

"There is a way to build a proposal in the next couple of days."

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