F1 team agreements should be rewritten 'ASAP' - Sauber

Agreements between Formula 1 teams and the commercial rights holder should be rewritten "as soon as possible" by new owners Liberty Media, according to Sauber team principal Monisha Kaltenborn (pictured).

All of the teams signed bilateral agreements with the commercial rights holder – then Bernie Ecclestone – by the end of 2013, with the deals running until the end of 2020. As commercial deals between Ecclestone and the teams, these covered aspects such as the revenue distribution in F1, with Kaltenborn believing the greater amounts received by the larger teams results in a "distorted competition."

With those agreements currently in place for another four years, Kaltenborn expects new owners Liberty Media to look into the possibility of revising the deals as a priority.

"I certainly hope that it's not going to drag on until 2020 because I'm sure that when people make such an investment, they do have a business plan in place that should start working when they take over and not start working in 2020," Kaltenborn told RACER. "The kind of system we have and what you hear from the new owners, we don't see how the system is going to work until 2020, if certain financial privileges are given irrespective of what the result is.

"If you want to make the competition come closer you can also not work like this. So I think everything has to be looked at, and we have a completely new basis."

Asked if she felt attempts to amend the agreements were likely to take place this year, Kaltenborn replied: "As soon as possible. I hope so."

"I think the priority has to be to make the competition more exciting, because no matter what you talk about and target – be it the fans, the regulations, the cost cap – at the end of the day we have to make sure that the sport is exciting to people we target at, and these are the fans."