Start, Circuit de Catalunya, 2020

All 10 teams commit to F1 by signing new Concorde Agreement

2020 F1 season

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All 10 Formula 1 teams will remain in the sport beyond the end of this year having signed a new Concorde Agreement committing them to the championship.

The previous commercial agreement was due to expire after 2020. The new deal is the first to be signed since Liberty Media took over as the sport’s commercial rights holder.

“This year has been unprecedented for the world and we are proud that Formula 1 has come together in recent months to return to racing in a safe way,” said Formula 1 chairman and CEO Chase Carey. “We said earlier in the year that due to the fluid nature of the pandemic, the Concorde Agreement would take additional time to agree and we are pleased that by August we have been able achieve agreement from all 10 teams on the plans for the long term future of our sport.

“All our fans want to see closer racing, wheel-to-wheel action and every team having a chance to get on the podium. The new Concorde Agreement, in conjunction with the regulations for 2022, will put in place the foundations to make this a reality and create an environment that is both financially fairer and closes the gaps between teams on the race track.”

Under the deal, teams have accepted revised financial terms which will replace the previous, widely criticised prize money structure which handed significant bonuses to certain teams.

This has meant the likes of Ferrari accepting less favourable commercial terms. However yesterday the team confirmed it will remain in the championship.

CEO Louis Camilleri said yesterday: “We are very confident that the collaboration with the FIA and Liberty Media can make Formula 1 even more attractive and spectacular, while preserving its status as the ultimate technological challenge.”

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Securing the continued participation of the sport’s most famous team was vital for the sport’s owners. “Scuderia Ferrari and Formula 1 have gone hand in hand since 1950 and we are happy that this relationship is set to continue for a long time, as it is part of the very DNA of this sport,” said Carey.

Ferrari is the only team which has competed in every season since the championship was inaugurated in 1950. McLaren and Williams, the next longest-running competitors, also confirmed their commitment yesterday. Today’s announcement confirms their seven rivals have also joined them.

This includes world champions Mercedes, who until recently were reluctant to commit. Just 12 days ago team principal Toto Wolff said he didn’t “feel ready to sign a Concorde Agreement”, claiming his team “weren’t treated in the way we should have been” in negotiations and would be “the biggest victim in terms of prize fund loss”.

One week later Wolff said his concerns had been addressed. “I’ve had some very constructive discussions with Chase over the last weekend and most of the clarifications that we wanted to achieve have been discussed and I feel that we are in a good point to sign the Concorde Agreement and move on,” he said during the Spanish Grand Prix weekend.

The new deal runs for a five-year period, covering 2021 to 2025. However teams have the option to withdraw from the agreement during that time.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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33 comments on “All 10 teams commit to F1 by signing new Concorde Agreement”

  1. Wolff: We’re not getting the prize money we want.
    Carey: We’re letting your mate Stroll get away with the copying.
    Wolf: … Well played.

    1. Carey, we are planning to look into the ERS systems used by you.
      Wolf: we will sign..

    2. Wolff: I thought F1 rewarded cheating? Or is that just Ferrari?

      1. petebaldwin (@)
        19th August 2020, 13:22

        FIA: No, not just Ferrari. Racing Point are going to have their best finishing position for years and you’re going to win both Championships again.

        1. are they tho? all i see is some decent qually but the car just falls away in the race, obv indication they do not understand the mercedes concept fully.

          1. Hiland (@flyingferrarim)
            21st August 2020, 21:06

            Or its simply qually mode? Because Williams has been qualifying pretty decent for them and fall back during the race too.

  2. It is good news, right? I’m not totally sure if this is a good news.

    1. For those hoping for Indycar 2.0 racing around Shopping Mall Parking lots – yes, this is great news.

      For other fans (majority) – F1’s future is quite bleak

      1. can you explain that?

      2. @dallein and in what world is the current inequitable funds division working for any team other than the top 3?

        Fair dinkum mate, if you think a more equitable prize money structure is a bad thing, you’ve got rocks in your head.

        1. @justrhysism what they are pointing out is that the commercial deal is tied into other changes that they believe will have a detrimental impact on the wider sport. In particular, it is the tying together of the revised revenue agreement to the budget cap mechanism, which is being implemented through the increased standardisation of components and significant tightening of the technical regulations.

          The teams might be getting more equitable payments, but I believe that the portion of the revenues that the teams get overall is going to fall slightly under the new agreement on the basis that, if there is a cost cap, the teams don’t need as much money as they got beforehand.

    2. Well, it locks in the 10 teams that are currently in F1, so that could be seen as a good thing.
      But equally it locks out everyone else who might want to compete in F1, so that’s less good.

      1. Why does it lock everyone else out?

        1. I assume that the current teams would prefer that no 11th or 12th team enter F1, thus taking some of their share of the payout pie. And they’d want that in writing – in the form of this very agreement.
          That’s kinda the point of the concorde agreement – to lock in the commercial aspects for the next 5 years.

          1. S I’ve just not heard of a Concorde Agreement locking new entrants out, and while I take your point about splitting up the money distribution further and teams not wanting that, I think it is not up to the teams. From everything I’ve read about Liberty’s plans they indeed want to get F1 to a point where new entrants feel they can afford it and can actually build themselves up to a podium level team in spite of the presence of the big teams. I doubt Liberty would go along with the teams having the power to shut new entrants out. New entrants have to pay their way in so perhaps those revenues could go to the other teams, but to me in general if F1 gets back to a state that new entrants are interested, and join, then that is a healthy state and a bit less money for each team due to more teams being there is palatable in an affordable and sustainable and growing F1.

      2. But if teams have “the option to withdraw from the agreement” how solid is the assumption that there is indeed a lock for the ten present teams?

        1. That’s true. They’re ‘locked in’ for as long as they want to be locked in.
          But they need to sign to guarantee that they are actually competing for something other than just media exposure.

        2. I’m surprised Renault is committing to the sport given the economic crisis we’re in. Haas business model isn’t making any sense right now, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ll pull the plug also.

  3. With Mercedes signing is it on the basis that they will sell out the F1 team to a Wolff, Stroll Aston Martin and Racing point stays as is as the no. 2 team? Mercedes continue to supply PUs. Is this the reason for the delay in Hamilton signing?

    1. Hiland (@flyingferrarim)
      21st August 2020, 21:23

      Why? Aston Martin is just the branding (essentially a title sponsor). I’m not sure it makes much sense to be a title sponsor on two teams! And if Merc sells to Wolff, I would title sponsor Wolff over stroll since that is the team with all the success. I’m sure Hamilton has his reasons in delaying the process (I don’t buy his original public response on the delay).

  4. That statement from Liberty sounds a lot like a promise to punish excellence to give the less able a chance to to compete.

    There seems to be a belief that ‘wheel to wheel action’ is the sole criterion of a successful series. If so we might as well watch F2 or F3 or FE which are already ‘standardised’ into a series prioritising ‘wheel to wheel’ action.

    And within that agreement there is still, it seems, the canker of special treatment for Ferrari.

    1. The huge news that has been in the works since Liberty took over is the ridding themselves of dependence on clean air to provide them with aero downforce that way, and rather going to ground effects and cars that make less wake as well.

      Rather than thinking of this as punishing excellence, it is about bring back some reasonableness to the excesses that the top teams have enjoyed for too long and that have meant lesser teams would see zero light at the end of the tunnel in terms of ever getting to where they have a chance at podiums. With cost caps and a more balanced money distribution at least the lesser teams stand more of a chance of having some impressive outings. The top teams are still going to be top, just not by nearly as much excess in the way of money and staffing. The excesses of the have teams is what has made F1 unsustainable and had put smaller teams in the ropes. Now things will be better balanced.

      1. I think the confusion Witan is making with the “punishing excellence” sound bite that gets dragged out constantly, is that having loads of money = excellence.

        If we equalise the spending significantly, we can really see who is excellent. Finally.

        1. @gongtong exactly! Levelling the playing field will finally highlight actual excellence in who can achieve the most from the same(-ish) pot of money.

    2. petebaldwin (@)
      19th August 2020, 13:24

      FE doesn’t do it for me but F2 has been the highlight of the race weekends so far this year. Absolutely brilliant racing.

      1. Maybe FE’s technological advances will be the catalyst to future F1 development, but right now racing on parking lots and nondescript urban locations isn’t doing it for me.

  5. “The new deal runs for a five-year period, covering 2021 to 2025. However teams have the option to withdraw from the agreement during that time.”
    Going back to read that article, my understanding is that by signing, the teams have all agreed that they will play by the new rules – IF they decide to play at all. Race Fans reported that teams will have the option of giving notice by March 31st of any given year during the agreement to quit F1.

    1. The next year will probably be crucial for F1. There might be another OEM departures like 2008, the impact of COVID related economic depression will play out for a few years, in the least.

      If they have to cut thousands of jobs, why shouldn’t Mercedes or Renault choose withdrawal from F1 too?

  6. Perhaps the big constructors have realised that if they’re to get a smaller slice of the pie, the size of the pie is what’s important.

  7. What made Mercedes sign?

  8. F1 had its periods of largest audience growth during eras where there wasn’t “wheel to wheel” racing at the front, and no DRS gimmicks or bland tracks made for artificial passing. People were attracted to it because it had a “vibe” from the drivers to the cars to the tracks. So the entire ethos of current direction changes is total BS. Get back to impressive cars that are loud and visceral. Or try opening up the top Grade 2 circuits to host F1 races. Let the drivers race and not be puppets controlled by engineers in front of computer screens.

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