F1 Future Healthy and Wealthy, Says Mosley

Formula One starts the new season looking healthier than it has done for more than a decade, according to FIA president Max Mosley.

After repeated warnings over the past two years that the glamour sport faced crisis with spiralling costs and the risk of teams failing, Mosley put a different gloss on the situation on Thursday.

Instead of impending doom and gloom, the International Automobile Federation head said the takeovers of Jordan and Jaguar by Midland and Red Bull respectively had transformed the landscape.

Measures had also been taken to slow cars on safety grounds.

"I think Formula One's never been in better shape, at least in the 13 or 14 years that I've been involved," Mosley told reporters before the season starts in Australia on March 6.

"The two teams that were in the most danger have been taken over by people with massive resources.

"Of the other two, I understand in respect of one of them that negotiations are currently underway again with an organisation with very significant resources," added Mosley, in a likely allusion to Swiss-based Sauber.

"That means the financial crisis that was threatening Formula One last autumn has disappeared," he added.

"As far as the FIA is concerned costs are now off the agenda unless and until we have another financial crisis and that's a huge relief because we really don't want to spend a lot of time on things like that unless we have to."

New Deal

Mosley said that Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone had offered all the teams from 2008 onwards, when the sport's existing commercial agreement expires, 50 percent of the revenues. Teams currently get around 25 percent.

Champions Ferrari have already agreed an extension to 2012 but the other nine teams are holding fire with manufacturers planning their own rival series from 2008.

"From 2008 on the teams are effectively going to get...50 percent of the gross income essentially," said Mosley of Ecclestone's offer.

"That represents a substantial increase over what they are getting now, very substantial."

He could not give exact details but said a figure of $500 million had been mentioned.

Mosley said there would also be "a backdated payment or series of payments which are also based on this 50 percent of the gross income for the years 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007."

He said these payments would then be spread over the five years of the new agreement from 2008 together with interest on that money.

"The teams' income from 2008 on is enormous, if they sign up," said Mosley. "Looked at from the outside, and completely neutrally, it does mean that the task facing any rival series is uphill.

"They would have to find enough money to pay people more than that without having the advantage that Bernie has of long-term contracts with all the promoters and the television companies stretching through the 2008 to 2012 period."

Mosley said that would come to $1 billion or 2 billion.

He repeated his view that there would not be a rival championship, arguing that it would be far cheaper for carmakers to do a deal with the shareholder banks that own 75 percent of the shares in Formula One holding company SLEC.