Meetings are already scheduled for this winter to discuss the idea of a F1 budget cap
The costs of racing haven’t gone down. With ever changing technology, there’s no place for costs to go but in the upward direction.
How do you control superpower sized racing teams? How do you trim spending when teams have an unlimited budget that generally nets around 0.5 billion in costs.
One idea is to put a cap is put in place. Another idea are new rules that regulate what teams can do on the machines themselves.
Both of those options are still on the table. FIA president Jean Todt says meetings are scheduled for this winter to discuss various options regarding controlled spending.
“We have been talking about cost control/cost cap for a while,” said Todt to Motorsport.com. “I believe it is a good move, but for me it has to be a combination.”
“We need to make regulations which will have some impact on the actual costs. To simply say we are going make a cost cap, I don’t think it will work. So far, any attempt has not worked.
“We have to be able to agree on something that will be more sophisticated in order to achieve that.”
Red Bull Racing operates on a budget of $571 million. At least, those were the numbers from 2015. Since then, a host of changes have come into F1, which only forces a momentary spike in costs to adjust on the new limits.
Christian Horner, the head of Red Bull Racing doesn’t appear to be against lowering the costs of racing in F1. However, he’s not fond of the budget cap idea.
“I’m not a huge fan of budget caps because I question how policeable it is – because everyone’s corporate structure is different,” Horner stated.
“It absolutely has to go hand in hand with dealing with the cost drivers upstream, because the costs are generated through the regulations. That is what determines the amount we spend.”
“So you have to deal with the root cause, and then it becomes far less sensitive to be imposing a cap.”
Links
Red Bull Racing | F1 | FIA
