Wolff: Money the 'elephant in the room' in Liberty talks

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has provided an insight into the ongoing contract talks between Formula One teams and Liberty Media, insisting that finances are still the 'elephant in the room' as budget caps, cheaper engine regulations, and a more even distribution of prize-fund money are proposed by the American owners.

Liberty Media have been in charge of Formula One for nearly a year now, and have polarised opinions within the sport with their raft of proposed changes.

One of their main aims is to even the playing field between the larger constructor teams like Mercedes and Ferrari to the smaller teams. An engine limit for the season will be set to three, while teams will only be allowed to spend a certain amount of money on engine development - a decision which has lead to Ferrari going as far as to threaten to quit F1 altogether.

Wolff of Mercedes has insisted that money and finance remains a stumbling block in the evolution of the ongoing talks.

"Well that's the elephant in the room," he told ESPN with regards to money issues.

"That's the most important topic after 2020. It is clear that we need to find a structure that works for everybody. Some of the smaller teams struggle on the income side.

"We are not against a cost cap as long as it can be policed in the right way and it has a sensible system [of introduction]. We are not going to cut our workforce by 30 percent from one year to another and we are not going to give up a performance advantage that we have lightly, so there needs to be something on the other side.

"These discussions have just started in a friendly way, and again here we acknowledge that we might have different opinions. But at the end, for the sake of Formula One, we will find the right solutions."

Wolff went on to address Ferrari's threat to leave F1, but it appears Mercedes are only focusing on retaining their championship in 2018, even if he does share some of the concerns of the Scuderia.

"Sergio is pretty outspoken and straight, and he comes to the point. He says that he wouldn't accept certain things and it's his way of dealing with things -- and in principle I share his opinion," Wolff continued.

"I have said it in Abu Dhabi that we love Formula One, we are in here to stay but it needs to have the right framework -- governance framework, regulatory framework, it needs to be managed in the right way and we will voice our opinion if we think things are not going in the right direction."

"We are all up for it," he said with regards to the new campaign.

"We like the challenge, we understand the shortcomings of some of the current regulations -- it needs a fight at the front and we embrace the fight.

"I think it's important to acknowledge that the other side might have a different opinion on things. I don't think there are massive barriers between us on the engine. They recognise it needs to be high-tech and we don't want to develop a completely new engine, so there is pretty much an alignment there.

"We need cars that are fast and spectacular, but you need to be able to overtake. We need to have a percent of the attention, we need tracks that you can overtake and where mistakes are being penalised, so this is our job and we actually want it to prosper.

"We can cope with any regulation change. There is no team in the world that has won with every single championship and this is something that we are pretty realistic about."

Wolff is still slightly concerned about the new engine regulations as it is his desire to retain the MGU-H part of the system, however.

"I think we are halfway there [with the engine proposal]. We don't like the cutting of the MGU-H -- a high-tech piece of equipment -- we would rather like to supply the H to some of the teams that lack the technology or some of the OEMs that lack the technology. The devil lies in the details but the conversations are going in the right way."