McLaren boss Zak Brown says the team is open to "short-term sacrifices" to help Formula One in the long term, namely by allowing a restructuring of its imbalanced system of revenue distribution.
F1's current system sees McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari receive special annual payments to recognise past success and importance to the sport, while Williams is also given a heritage payment. Ferrari also gets a yearly bonus payment of around $68 million, contributing to a final amount of around $180 million.
By contrast, Force India, Toro Rosso, Renault and Sauber make do with just their Column 1 ($36 million for each team) and Column 2 (a percentage based on constructors' finish) payments. Haas, the American outfit which joined the grid in 2016, will only receive $19 million this year as it will not qualify for Column 1 money until it has completed its second season.
Liberty hopes to tackle the issue of revenue distribution when new contracts are drawn up in 2020 and Brown has welcomed the way it has dealt with teams since completing the takeover in January.
"The transparency in which they're working is great," Brown said. "They're treating everyone fairly and equally. So we are not having to worry about if there's a special deal being cut with one team or another and that whole way the sport has been built so that's refreshing.
"There's not this sense of me, the kind of work extra hard the politic or bite. You just get the sense when they make their final decisions they are going to be the same for everyone and then at McLaren, what we've communicated is we are prepared to make some short term sacrifices for the long term gain of the sport because obviously we are one of the teams that benefits from the revenue distribution and while I don't think we need to go to a flat revenue structure, clearly it's too out of balance compared to other sports and that's why we have this out of balance race results."
When asked if every team shared the view of making short-term sacrifice to benefit the sport, Brown smiled and said: "I doubt it".
Currently 68 percent of all F1's income (an estimated $1.38 billion) is shared among the teams. Though Brown is happy to see that number increased, he thinks F1 can do a better job of how that amount is shared around the grid.
"You know this is a time where I think we need to work together to work the sport. So I have been asked questions on do you think you get the right slice of the pie? 68 percent now, of course I would love a stab at 75 and I am sure Liberty would love to have it be 55.
"I think the percentages is less relevant if we can double, triple or quadruple the size of the pool. So to me it's not should it be 68, 75 or 55. How do we take it from the billion or so that comes to the teams now. How do we get that to two, that should be a bigger focus for all of us."
Brown, who replaced Ron Dennis as McLaren CEO at the end of last year, believes any changes will need to be given a detailed breakdown so teams understand what they are giving up.
"We are a supporter of cost cap. So I am more interested in understanding and improving the bottom line of the racing team than the top line and I think they're all connected so I think it's hard to go 'we are prepared to sacrifice x' because I want to make that decision at the same time as understanding what our costs are going to be etc. etc, and where is the money going.
"But we are very opened minded to a clean sheet of paper approach and we are going to look at through the filter is this going to grow the sport. So we are going to put Formula One first, and McLaren a really close second."