F1 will address costs before cutting team income

F1 chief Chase Carey and his colleagues have made it clear that they want to see a fairer spread of income once the current Concorde Agreement runs out in 2020.

The key to that ambition is convincing the bigger, best-paid teams to accepts reduced revenues on the basis that their costs will also come down as the rules are addressed.

As the head of the sporting side of F1, Brawn has been charged with coming up with a technical package, including a new engine for 2021, that will both reduce expenditure and increase competition.

"To have a discussion about remuneration with the teams is difficult if you don't present both sides," said Brawn. "We've got to present how we see the sport going forward in terms of the investment that the teams make, because it's substantial.

"I think it's fair to say that there's not a team in F1 that wouldn't welcome a reduction in costs. We're preparing our case and our proposals with the FIA to achieve that.

"We're building a team at the moment, and you'll see from the announcements we've made that the team is multi-faceted, and it's both technical people and commercial people."

Brawn revealed that former Honda, Brawn and Mercedes financial director Nigel Kerr – whose appointment was announced last month – has been tasked with studying current spending by teams, and demonstrating how that can change under a new rules package.

"Nigel's task will be to help build the financial models that can demonstrate hopefully the way forward for the teams in F1. So we're putting all that together.

"Clearly it's got to be in co-operation with the FIA. The FIA are the regulators of our sport, and they are the final arbiter of what goes on in the sport.

"We want to supplement and support those activities, and make proposals that we think are good for the sport. But the remuneration debate has to go hand-in-hand with how we control the costs, or the investments needed in F1."

Brawn also made it clear that while the aim is to close up the field in years to come, he doesn't want to completely undermine the established big players.

"I think one thing I'd like to say is that we don't want to dumb F1 down. I think F1 still has to be aspirational for the teams.

"We don't want all the teams to be exactly the same, in the respect that there should still be the aspirational teams, there should still be the Ferraris, there should still be the Mercedes, there should still be the Red Bulls, that teams want to aspire to beat.

"But we don't want domination. We need an environment where a team that does a really good job can do well. But we don't want a situation where financial power enables a team to get a dominant position, as has happened in the last few years."