F1 CEO Bernie Ecclestone is "preparing to scrap" more than £150M ($198M) paid to the top four teams to "wipe out inequality in the sport and give the smallest outfits a chance to compete," according to Kevin Eason of the LONDON TIMES. Ecclestone is "secretly preparing to wipe out historic bonus payments to Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes to introduce a Premier League football-style system of flat payments plus prize money for performance." The new system "could hit Ferrari, traditionally the best-paid team in the paddock, the hardest" with as much as £60M ($79M) at stake. Red Bull would "also face a massive loss" after being handed £47M extra in '14. Ecclestone knows that "he is in for a fight, but he also knows that he can head off a potential investigation by the European Union competition authorities by making a pre-emptive strike against the contracts that have split F1 in two." Ecclestone would also have the "broader support" of the F1 paddock, the FIA and millions of fans who have been "highly critical of a payments system that created a sport of haves and have-nots." The new contracts "could be on the table for negotiation within weeks, to be in place when commercial deals expire" in '20. Ecclestone has "kept the reorganisation quiet," except to warn Mercedes Motorsports Dir Toto Wolff, "arguably the key figure in the F1 paddock," that change was coming and "it could hurt." Ecclestone said, "I told Toto not to think about banking any money yet. I am going to have a good look at how things work to see if I can come up with something more equal for all the teams. The Premier League has a good way of distributing the prize money, so maybe that could work for us." With a Stock Exchange flotation "now off the agenda, any new system is likely to be designed to keep all 11 teams healthy and be much simpler, with one flat-rate payment plus prize money according to championship points" (LONDON TIMES, 6/27). REUTERS' Alan Baldwin reported one team source said that the comments were to be interpreted as "the first shot of the post-2020 commercial negotiations." Ferrari, the only team to have been in the championship since it started in '50 and the most successful, receives "far more money than others including a special long-standing bonus" of around $70M (REUTERS, 6/27).
