“The more successful teams get more television exposure and therefore get more sponsorship money,” Mosley told Autosport magazine. “The most successful team owners say ‘We are the most successful teams, we should have the most money’. But if the three most successful teams were the only teams, you wouldn’t have a show. They’ve got plenty of money anyway, because they run round and round in front of the television cameras so the sponsors pay them. It’s the little guys who have to worry."
Mosley’s comments come as the Formula One teams and manufacturers battle it out with German media giant Kirch in a bid to obtain what they see as a fairer distribution of television rights. Kirch recently took a majority stake in Bernie Ecclestone’s SLEC, the holding company which controls the broadcasting rights for F1.
Some of the leading manufacturers, including Jaguar and BMW, have threatened to form their own ‘breakaway’ series to rival the Grand Prix as a threat to Kirch.
But earlier this week Tom Walkinshaw, the boss of the Arrows F1 team, said the threat of a breakaway series would be resolved in the next couple of months.
No rival championship to F1’s Grand Prix circuit will be able to operate until 2008 when the Concorde agreement between SLEC and the motor racing governing body FIA, which gives SLEC commercial control of Grand Prix racing, expires.
