New Concorde Agreement Signed

The FIA have announced the long awaited Concorde Agreement – which will run until the end of 2012 – has now been signed by the teams and current FIA president Max Mosley. The agreement concludes a long battle between FOTA and the FIA that at times, threatened to rip the sport apart. While the deal is not a 100% guarantee that all is now as everyone wants, it is a huge step towards securing the sport a more stable future which all parties agree to abide by.

The Concorde Agreement sets out how the sport is run, its commercial income and how it is divided up among the competing teams and also what became a real sticking point up until very recently, the rules and how they will change in the coming years.

Following approval by the World Motor Sport Council, late last night FIA President Max Mosley signed the 2009 Concorde Agreement, heralding a renewed period of stability for the FIA Formula One World Championship.

The Concorde Agreement – a contract between the FIA, F1’s Commercial Rights-Holder and the participating Teams – sets out the basis on which the Teams participate in the Championship and share in its commercial success.

The WMSC has also approved a slightly revised set of stable Sporting and Technical Regulations (to apply from the 2010 Championship onwards), which have been agreed by the FIA and the Teams and which will be published shortly on the FIA’s website.

The new Concorde Agreement, which runs until 31 December 2012, provides for a continuation of the procedures in the 1998 Concorde Agreement, with decisions taken by working groups and commissions, upon which all teams have voting rights, before going to the WMSC for ratification.

In addition, as agreed in Paris on 24 June 2009, the Teams have entered into a resource restriction agreement, which aims to return expenditure to the levels that prevailed in the early 1990s.

With the 2009 Concorde Agreement and the resource restriction agreement in place, the FIA looks forward to a period of stability and prosperity in the FIA Formula One World Championship. FIA Statement.

All teams have agreed to the terms of the new Concorde Agreement with the exception of BMW who withdrew from the 2010 championship earlier in the week. However, should the German motor manufacturer wish to sell the team on to another company, they will need to sign the agreement, and the FIA have apparently set a deadline of August 5th for this to happen.

The new Concorde Agreement appears to be a continuation of the already-in-place measures contained in the previous 1998 Agreement, but with an added section pertaining to the need to reduce costs back down to those levels seen in the early ’90s. According to the FIA, the rules for the 2010 championship have been altered slightly, and these will be published to the FIA website sometime soon.