Grand Prix World Championship

The Grand Prix World Championship (GPWC) refers to a number of proposed alternative world championship auto racing series to rival or replace Formula One. Founded in 2001, the GPWC was created as a tool to assist the companies in bargaining with Bernie Ecclestone for an agreeable extension to the 1997 Concorde Agreement, the contract by whose terms the teams compete in Formula One.

In 1979, the Commission Sportive Internationale, an organization subordinate to the FIA which was at that time the rule-making body for Formula One, was dissolved and replaced by the Fédération Internationale du Sport Automobile, or FISA, which would serve the same function. FISA clashed repeatedly with the Formula One Constructors Association (FOCA), which represented the teams' interests. FOCA's chief executive at the time was Bernie Ecclestone and his legal advisor was Max Mosley, while the president of FISA was Jean Marie Balestre.

The two organizations' disagreements, which came to be known as the FISA–FOCA war, resulted in several races being cancelled. Goodyear threatened to withdraw entirely from Formula One, an event which would have been commercially disastrous for the sport, so Ecclestone organized a meeting of team managers, Balestre, and other FISA representatives at the offices of the FIA in the Place de la Concorde, Paris, France. On January 19, 1981, after thirteen straight hours of negotiation, all parties present signed the first Concorde Agreement, named after the plaza in Paris where the discussions took place. The Concorde Agreement is a contract with the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, Formula One teams and Formula One Administration that dicates the terms by which the teams compete in races and take their share of the television revenues and prize money. In 1995, the FIA granted commercial rights of Formula One to FOA for a period of 14 years in exchange for an annual payment from Ecclestone. Formula One subsequently signed another extensions of the Concorde Agreement in 1987, 1992 and 1997. However, McLaren. Tyrrell and Williams did not sign the agreement in 1997 citing Ecclestone for not allowing more commercial opportunities to be made available. A subsequent amendment led to the three teams signing the agreement in 1998.

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