Formula One Teams’ Association chairman Martin Whitmarsh says the teams should have a stake in the sport, following a FOTA meeting in Turkey.
The meeting between team principals took place in the McLaren motorhome on Friday, with the general consensus being that they, the teams, should have some ownership in the sport.
The news follows reports that NewsCorp along with Exor are looking to acquire the rights’ from current owners CVC Capital Partners and other smaller shareholders.
Taking an ownership stake would allow the teams to have more say in the rules and allow them to apportion a larger amount of the commercial revenues to themselves, which Whitmarsh said would be ‘desirable’.
“I think it ultimately is desirable to have team ownership of commercial rights,” he said following the meeting.
“The teams then I think, we have all got to look at whether we, each of us, want to be involved in an ownership model in the future, if the current owners want to sell. I suspect they will at some stage but we will have to see.”
The McLaren team principal said he, and others, were open to discussions with NewsCorp/Exor about the sale of the sport, adding the interest is ‘exciting’.
“We will talk about. “It will be the first time the teams have sat down and had discussions since some of the revelations of the week have come out, and it will be useful to get people’s views.
“It is exciting if there are new organisations that may bring new things to the sport. I think that is to be encouraging.
“We are seeing now a flow back of sponsorship interest at all levels of the sport, and that is positive. We have stabilised costs to a degree, we are trying to work together and if people are saying now is the opportunity to come in to F1, there are all sorts of pitfalls and trenches that we can fall into as we try and chart the path going forward. But hopefully we can find a positive way going forward for the sport.”
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