Formula One news

Allow Brawn their TV money, says Whitmarsh

Martin Whitmarsh is adamant that the Brawn GP team should receive their share of Formula One's television rights this season, after Renault's Flavio Briatore claimed that the new team did not deserve the funds. McLaren team principal Whitmarsh, however, believes that the Brackley-based team has every right to the money.

As the FIA declared Brawn a new entry - as opposed to solely a name change (from Honda) - for this year, Italian Briatore feels that the new team should not gain any share of the rights for the standard three years for a new team, and that it should be spread equally amongst teams who have spent extra money on the development and installation of double diffusers at late notice. As things stand, the English squad is looking to take the share previously held by the Honda, an estimated €30 million.

Whitmarsh took over as McLaren team principal this year

Whitmarsh repeated the pre-season view of the Formula One Teams' Association (FOTA): "At the moment we've undertaken as a team to support Brawn. Clearly, there's a lot of support given by this team (McLaren) and Mercedes during the winter because we saw the importance of keeping Brawn in F1. It would now be hypocritical (to not allow Brawn the money), because it happens to be painful for us because they're competitive to not want to give them a proportion of the distribution under Concorde (a standard agreement by which all teams compete in F1)."

Whitmarsh continued that express his opinion that an amount of calmness must remain within FOTA, and that McLaren has chosen to stay out of the matter thus far having seen a number of 'flamboyant gestures' take place. "The world is in an economic crisis," he reminded. "The automotive sector is going through a tough time and what F1 should be doing is acting responsibly, remaining calm and making sure we work together and that's certainly our view. We've said that we support Brawn; we've said that we're going to, in that they're considered a new entry, distribute Concorde monies to them, and we should do what we said we were going to do."

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