As reported by Pitpass on Saturday, and contrary to claims elsewhere, a deal between the manufacturers that comprise the GPMA and CVC Capital Partners, owners of F1, is not as imminent as some would have you believe, for talks have reached a major roadblock.

It appears that Bernie Ecclestone has withdrawn the offer to the GPMA teams of 60 percent of Formula One profits and said that this will only happen if their manufacturer parent companies sign up to the new Concorde Agreement. Should they fail to do so, the deal will be for 50 percent.

The fact is that the parent companies will never directly sign such a contract. In other forms of motorsport, such as Le Mans, MotoGP etc, the manufacturers themselves do not sign commercial rights agreements directly but rather the teams that they own sign them.

The GPMA teams want the 60 percent since they have based their discussions and commitment on getting it, consequently we face a 'roadblock'.

At the weekend, sections of the media quoted Renault F1 Team boss, Flavio Briatore, as saying that the deal was imminent, indeed one quirky quote from the Italian suggested that the reason he hadn't signed so far is that he hadn't got a pen. However, with the decision needing to come from the manufacturer parent companies, the decision as to whether to sign or not is entirely out of Briatore's hands.

According to the GPMA website, the carmakers' representatives are: Prof. Burkhard Göschel (BMW), Dr. Dieter Zetsche (DaimlerChrysler), Hiroshi Oshima (Honda), Patrick Faure now Alain Dassas (Renault) and Tsutomu Tomita - Chairman of Toyota Motorsport GmbH. Consequently it doesn't matter whether Briatore or the others (except Tomita) want to sign the deal since the decision of the carmakers in the GPMA is not in their hands.

According to a report by Christian Sylt and Caroline Reid for the Sunday Express, it was at a meeting over the Bahrain GP weekend when Bernie Ecclestone retracted the proposal; "offering the teams just 50 percent unless their manufacturer parent companies signed - a difference of $500 million over the five years of the contract". The Teams currently get just 23 percent.

According to Sylt and Reid's sources; "the manufacturers are definitely not going to sign and describe the current impasse as a 'deal breaker', since previous discussions have been based on the teams receiving 60 per cent.

"As limited subsidiaries of the parent companies, the teams could be dissolved if the manufacturers wanted to leave the sport, making it difficult for them to be pursued for damages".

Should the deal collapse, this would come as a major blow to CVC, which has only just taken full control of the sport's commercial rights, indeed, CVC is understood to be planning a bond issue, secured on future revenues, in order to refinance its $1 billion acquisition.

In order to guarantee stable revenues, F1 will need, at the very minimum, a five-year contract with the manufacturers and their teams.

However, knowing Bernie, and the way he works, it's not impossible that he has retracted the offer in order to say at a later date that the GPMA teams can have the 60% so long as they sign to the FIA's sporting and technical regulations for 2008 and beyond.

To summarise, whatever else you may have heard, this issue is far from resolved and a deal is certainly not "imminent".