GPWC proposes four-fold increase in funds.

The Formula One rival being set up by the carmakers consortium GPWC has said that it intends to offer its teams a bigger share of the sport's revenues, with a figure of 80 per cent being bandied about.

According to the UK's Times newspaper, representatives of the breakaway series plan to meet with current F1 team bosses to present their vision ahead of the Australian Grand Prix in March, and hope that the prospect of increased incomes will produce a wholesale defection to the new championship, which is expected to start in 2008, at the end of the current Concorde Agreement.

The current system, overseen by Bernie Ecclestone, pays the ten competing teams just 23 per cent of the total revenue generated by the sport, a figure which has caused unrest among the major manufacturers involved. The remaining quartet - Renault, Fiat/Ferrari, DaimlerChrysler and BMW - insist that they are prepared to continue with plans to form the breakaway unless a resolution can be found, and have proposed that the teams will control the way the championship is run. Fellow manufacturers Honda and Toyota have yet to commit to the GPWC, while Ford abdicated its position after selling its F1 involvement to Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz.

"We are not here to criticise Bernie Ecclestone, because he has done an unbelievable job with Formula One - but it doesn't work as well as it could or should," a GPWC spokesman told the newspaper, "There are a lot of things that are right, but there are increasingly a lot of things that are not right. We have to move quickly because, realistically, things need to be in place during 2005 if we are to be ready in time.

"We are listening to what the teams, the fans and the broadcasters are telling us so that we can produce a series with a structure and a transparency that benefits all stakeholders and not just one. We need a more balanced economic model that benefits the teams more, the customers more and gives the advertisers a global platform."

Since the confirmation that GPWC intended to press ahead with its series, Ecclestone has been tying up events at circuits key to Formula One including, most recently, Silverstone. Other venues, both already confirmed on the F1 schedule or awaiting new deals, have been in talks with the GPWC about staging events from 2008.