New Formula One teams must pay a £16m deposit

This comes following a US F1 team's failure to secure enough money to race this year.

F1's governing body, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), has opened a tender for a team to take up the vacant slot next year and Ecclestone says “we have told them that if they can't put 16 million in now we don't want them. If they can't find that now there is no way they are going to run". he told the quoted as saying by the London Evening Standard

Until 2008 any team which wanted to join F1 had to pay the FIA a refundable £24.2 million deposit which was forfeited if it failed to race.

This condition of entry was scrapped in order to encourage new entrants as team budgets soared to £107 million annually.

In the past two years BMW, Honda and Toyota have left the sport due to the high cost of competing.

Although three new outfits, Lotus, Hispania and Virgin Racing, entered F1 this year, their lack of financial horsepower has been all too apparent.

The new teams' drivers finished yesterday's British Grand Prix in the bottom six slots and they occupy the same spaces in the standings overall.

None of those teams have got a point in the past 10 races and Ecclestone  is “not happy” with their performance.

Requiring a £16 million deposit will make it harder for independently-financed teams to join F1, and with this requirement teams will think twice before entering unless they have a solid financvial backing.