In light of a threat by Ferrari and Mercedes to form a breakaway series, Red Bull's Christian Horner says Liberty Media and the FIA need to take a strong stance when it comes to the new 2021 rules and tell the teams "sign up or leave".
Liberty has already presented draft regulations to all ten teams, and whilst the majority had no complaints, they were met with disapproval by Ferrari's Sergio Marchionne and Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff.
Marchionne went as far as threatening to leave Formula 1 to form a separate series – a call Mercedes looked to initially back. But Horner dismissed the comments as "history repeating itself" as Ferrari often make similar threats.
Horner instead wants the sport to take a strong stance and lay out the new rules with a 'take it or leave it' attitude, because getting ten teams to agree on something is "impossible".
"My view on this is very simple: trying to get a consensus between teams that have got varying objectives, different set-ups, is going to be impossible," he said during the Australian Grand Prix weekend.
"So it’s down to the commercial rights holder and the FIA to get together, come up with a set of regulations, what is the financial framework, what is the [prize money] distribution that they want to have, put it on the table and it’s down to the teams whether they want to sign up to that or not.
"Of course, as Toto says, there will be a lot of positioning, the media will be used, it’s history repeating itself. It happens every five or six years, every time the Concorde agreement comes up for renewal.
"But my feeling is, Liberty, together with FIA, need to get on the same piece of paper to say this is what we want Formula 1 to be, this is the financial distribution surrounding it, here’s the deal and lay it out to the teams."
