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Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has encouraged F1's teams not to turn down Liberty Media's offer of a shareholding in the championship.
Upon finalising their purchase of a majority stake in the sport in January, Liberty and F1's new Chief Executive Officer, Chase Carey, gave each team the opportunity to buy their own shares. The total value of the shares that have been kept aside for them is believed to be $400 million, and they have six months to buy into these before the offer is withdrawn.
The idea was devised to allow the teams to have a bigger interest in the commercial future of F1, and Wolff has told Trend, an Austrian magazine, that it should not be ignored.
"This is an idea which one shouldn't dismiss easily," he stated. "But in any case one must know more about the business case and our role in the whole (project). Talks about this have only just begun and will probably last over the coming months."
So far, Liberty's offer is yet to be accepted by any of the 2017 teams. Only Sergio Marchionne, the CEO of Ferrari, has responded with any interest - but he wants to know where F1 is headed after 2020, when the current Concorde Agreement between the teams expires.
"We have started exploring the opportunity now," explained Marchionne. "We are in discussions with Liberty and I recently had a meeting with Chase.
"Becoming a non-voting shareholder in an entity, which effectively keeps us trapped in without knowledge of what 2021 and the later world will look like, it is something I consider unwise. So it is one of the things we have tabled with Chase."
Mason Hawker
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It would be an interesting prospect to see teams get involved