MAJOR changes to the face of grand prix motor racing affecting its political and commercial future, including transforming faces from three to two day events and long term commitments to contest the world championship on the part of competing teams, were announced by the sport's governing body, the FIA, yesterday.

These new rules are part of a package of measures introduced as part of a renewal of the Concorde agreement, the protocol governing Formula One. The new agreement will run from 1997 to 2001 inclusive, but has not yet been agreed by the Williams, Tyrrell and McLaren teams. The latter two teams have declined to sign the new deal while Frank Williams is understood to have initial signed but subsequently to have withdrew his consent.

It is understood that these three teams have not signed the agreement because they are not satisfied with the financial aspects of Formula one. The FIA has decided to scrap the current prize money scale and replace it with a system for dividing the share of television income.

However, according to the communique issued yesterday the eight competing teams who have signed the Concorde agreement are jointly bound to produce at least 20 cars for each world championship. This raises the possibility of teams such as Benetton, Ferrari and Jordan running three cars if they could raise sufficient finance.

Other changes include an increase in the maximum number of races from 16 to 17 and the fact that changes to the sporting and technical regulations can now be made with the agreement of 80 per cent of those teams which have signed the Concorde agreement.

In future, signatories to the Concorde agreement would not be permitted to compete in any other form of open wheel racing without the FIA's consent. This effectively debars any formula one constructor from trying their hand in the US based Indycar series which has proved so popular in recent years.