Any new entrants to the Formula 1 grid will have to pay a whopping $200m to be given to the other teams beforehand, it’s been revealed.
F1 has had a 10-team championship since 2017, after Manor was the last of the 2010 teams to collapse, while Haas was the most recent new entry, joining back in 2016.
Under the new budget cap and technical regulations being introduced across the next two years, at least two new outfits have voiced interest, one linked to F2 team Campos Racing and Panthera Team Asia.
But with more teams comes a greater diluting of the prize money that is shared amongst the current outfits and as McLaren CEO Zak Brown explained…
“What that $200m is intended to do is to protect the value of the existing teams – as reported on the Williams sale that’s less expensive and you get a lot more for your money than starting a new team,” he said.
“But I think if you believe in the franchise value growth of Formula 1 then you’ll get that $200million back and then some at a later date.
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“Also, the way the regulations are written there is the ability for Liberty and the teams to agree to adjust that number,” he noted, with the fee in fact totally waivable if all current teams agreed.
“I think what we’re trying to do as an industry is stop what we’ve had in the past where a USF1 announces they are going Formula 1 racing and they never get to the track.
“So the $200m is intended to really make sure that if someone is coming into the sport that they have the wherewithal to do it and we don’t have what we’ve historically had which is random announcements that people are going to come in and then they never make it to the track.
“I don’t think you’d ever see that in other major forms of sport.”
This new requirement is included in the new Concorde Agreement which was recently agreed to, reluctantly by some, and runs until 2025.
However, after it was revealed, it has been criticised as simply a way of preventing new entries.
“No, on the contrary, I think it’s very important. It sets a floor for team valuation,” Mercedes boss Toto Wolff told Motorsport.com.
“Obviously it’s in the discretion of the commercial rights holder to decide otherwise if we are less than 10 teams, but I think such franchise value is completely normal.
“It should be limited to 10 teams. It is something special, to have an entry into Formula 1.
“That is valid for most of the professional sports leagues.”
Haas chief Guenther Steiner agreed, adding: “If you pay this, you buy a value,” he said.
“Anybody who has got money can decide if he wants to make an investment or not. With the budget cup, it can be an investment. Because if you do a good job, you can be profitable.
“I think it’s an opportunity. You can create a value for somebody coming in new. Whoever comes in, he needs [to be] pretty solid to put a considerable chunk of money down to get the license, and then to build up the team, or buy a team.
“So you’re almost sure that you get people which can raise this amount of monies.
“The good thing is with the budget cap you can budget for how much you’re going to spend. Now you know how much it would cost you, and then you can evaluate if it’s worthwhile the risk to invest in it.
“I think it’s actually a positive for F1, that if somebody comes in, it is serious.”