New Concorde Agreement row brews

A fresh row is brewing over European competition law, just weeks after the European Union's Competitions' Commission appeared to have given the sport a clean bill of health after requesting and receiving guarantees on such matters as commercial and TV rights. This time, the seeds of the row appear to have come from within the ranks of the teams themselves.

In order to comply with EU requests, the sport's governing body, the FIA, made changes to the Concorde Agreement, the document by which F1 is run. The changes, made in July 2000, were introduced to satisfy the EU that the sport was not being run as a non-competitive monopoly.

But senior sources in the F1 paddock say that the McLaren and Williams teams have written to the EU saying the changes by the FIA were made unilaterally and without the consent of the teams, making them invalid.

Any changes to the Concorde Agreement can only be made with the full agreement of all the teams and the FIA. The letter to the EU is believed to have been supported by up to four other teams.

It is believed that the letter to the EU may be an attempt by the teams to put pressure on the FIA to come up with a new Concorde Agreement, which covers such aspects of the sport as the distribution of TV revenues and race purses. The teams are pushing for what they see as a fairer distribution of monies.

Speaking in Hockenheim last weekend, Arrows boss Tom Walkinshaw said: "If there is a new agreement thrashed out, it will benefit everyone. It would be in the best interests of everyone in the sport if we cvould have stability and clarity and I don't think it is healthy to have parts of the sport saying they are going to do other things."

The five European manufacturers currently involved in F1 - Ford (Jaguar), Renault, BMW, Fiat (Ferrari) and Mercedes-Benz - have announced plans to set up their own championship at the end of the current period of the Concorde Agreement, which runs until the end of 2007.

The so-called 'Big Five' want a greater say in the running and direction of the sport and in its commercial exploitation, but a revised Concorde Agreement could prove crucial in keeping them in F1.