Mosley Blasts F1 Teams for Wasting Money

Max Mosley, the FIA president, has criticized formula one teams for failing to save money at a time when they are arguing for a bigger slice of the sport's $800m (£400m) annual commercial rights income, distributed by Bernie Ecclestone's Formula One Management group.

In a robust letter sent last week to all the team principals, and leaked to the Guardian, Mosley claims that "formula one's vast profits are currently being wasted on pointless exercises for the private entertainment of the teams' engineers. As a result, several independent teams are losing money when they should be making a profit, while car manufacturers are forced to spend excessively. This is the problem which needs to be addressed."

He added: "If it did not waste money on pointless, hidden and duplicated technology, formula one would be an immensely profitable business. Each [team] would be a valuable franchise. Instead it is living on subsidies from the car industry and hand-outs from friendly billionaires."

This last remark is seen by many as a referring not only to Mansour Ojjeh, the TAG billionaire who owns 15% of McLaren, but also to the Indian entrepreneur Vijay Mallya, who recently paid $80m to buy the Spyker team which started life as Jordan before being sold to Alex Shnaider's Midland Group at the start of 2005.

The top 10 teams in the constructors' championship share just 50% of Ecclestone's commercial rights purse, with the company controlled by the 76-year-old taking the remainder.

Although no team principal was available for comment last night, many believe the easiest way of expanding the teams' commercial viability is for Ecclestone to open his wallet to grant a bigger share to the teams. They regard Mosley's intervention as a distraction. Yet the FIA president remains unyielding. "Until the basic problem of costs has been resolved, time should not be wasted discussing how the money is to be distributed," he said.