F1 cost cutting will bring prices down - Ecclestone

Bernie Ecclestone has indicated that F1's prices both for race promoters and ticket buyers will come down with shrinking expenditure by the teams.

Bernie Ecclestone.

Photo by xpb.cc.

Team spending will continue to plummet in 2010 and beyond with the recent signing of a cost saving agreement, and the F1 chief executive told the latest issue of F1 Racing magazine that this will take pressure off the sport's commercial rights holders.

"When that happens we won't have to produce so much money for (the teams) and, therefore, we can ask for less money from the promoter and the ticket prices will come down.

"We want that to happen as soon as possible," the 78-year-old Briton said.

Ecclestone's comments have emerged at a time when some of F1's traditional promoters are struggling to afford their races, and some new venues in increasingly foreign locations are staging events in front of near-bare grandstands.

"If we go to the places where the tribunes are empty and at the same time traditional fans of F1 don't have a race, there's something wrong," FIA presidential candidate Ari Vatanen said in London last week, according to ITV.

"The fact that Silverstone may not have a race, Hockenheim may not have a race next year, France may not have a race ... it means we are alienating the traditional customers and fans and it is not so easy to win them back," he added.