What he thought was the decent thing to do was offer the Formula One teams a bigger share of the championship's annual incomes in order to have them committed to the sport at least until the end of 2012. So all the teams had to do was sign an agreement – different from the Concorde Agreement signed earlier this year – that would bind them legally to F1 racing for the next 3 years but would get them more money at the end of each year.
The sum that we're talking about is in the vicinity of 10 per cent commercial income pay-rise, which would have meant that an overall 60 per cent of F1's income would have been distributed to the teams from 2010 onwards.
However, according to a report in the Financial Times, the teams turned down Ecclestone's offer, obviously because of the legal implications of the agreement. For the time being, only Mercedes-Benz, Ferrari and Renault have chosen to stay in the sport for the 2010 championship (as far as car makers go).
Of those three, Ferrari and Mercedes-Benz are likely to remain committed to the sport for the long run – Ferrari is a sine-qua-non element of F1 racing, while their German rivals have just launched a brand new project in the series – while Renault are in doubt from 2011 onwards.
All the deals signed by the French car maker for the future are reportedly one-year contracts, which led many to believe Renault is planning to leave the sport at the end of next season. The car manufacturer was heavily linked with such a move in recent months, but confirmed a definitive decision on its F1 future will be made near the end of the year.
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