Team Principals discussed cost crisis during F1 Show Special
Friday 17 October 2014 17:29, UK
Formula 1’s leading outfits are adamant they could cope with a sudden transition to three-car teams but have made clear that it is a scenario they want to avoid for 2015.
The prospect of the grid’s biggest outfits running additional cars at some point in the future has long been mooted but the topic has gained fresh traction in recent weeks amid the increasingly perilous financial situations that some of the sport’s smaller, less-well-funded outfits find themselves in.
F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone fuelled speculation recently when he remarked that he “would rather see Ferrari with three cars, or any of the other top teams with three cars, than having teams that are struggling”.
The ever-thorny issue of cost control in F1 formed a central part of Friday’s special edition of The F1 Show at Suzuka when eight Team Principals discussed some of the major talking points currently gripping the sport.
Christian Horner, team boss of quadruple World Champions Red Bull, confirmed his outfit had the capability to run a third car with little notice but stressed they would much rather stick with just two cars and the grid remain with its current complement of 11 teams over the winter.
“If needs must and we needed to run a third car next weekend, could we do it? Of course we could,” Horner told Sky Sports F1.
“That’s the way Formula 1 works, that’s the way you have to react in this business. But hopefully that won’t be required, we should only be required to run a third car if teams disappear and of course it’s in nobody’s interest to see teams disappear.
“So hopefully there won’t be the necessity for it.”
Concurring with his Red Bull counterpart, McLaren Racing Director Eric Boullier said that F1 as a whole instead needed to work out how to help the teams in financial peril stay in business.
The Frenchman, however, did offer a flip side to any three-car future by suggesting that it could provide an improved gateway to F1 for young drivers.
“I agree with Christian, we are not in favour of running three cars because that means we would lose some teams and we definitely don’t want this. So I think it is better to first work on trying to help them and save the small teams," Boullier stated.
“If we had eventually to run a third car obviously there is some mechanism already in place because we want to protect F1 as well and make sure the grid, the number of cars, and the show is good.
“If we wanted to run a rookie driver, why not? It could be the opportunity to give some training and experience to young drivers and prepare the future star.”
Horner and Boullier expressed their thoughts on the subject while sitting alongside Sauber’s Monisha Kaltenborn and Caterham’s Manfredo Ravetto, who head up teams where the financial squeeze is being most acutely felt.
An alternative to three-car teams is for smaller outfits to run ‘customer cars’ bought from the top-end of the grid. While Ravetto is against such a wholesale rules reinterpretation, he does believe the areas in which teams can buy ‘off-the-self’ parts from their competitors should be increased.
“You must protect intellectual property in Formula 1,” he said. “Having said this, we maybe should discuss on enlarging the platform of parts of design which can be shared. We would definitely be in favour of this.”
Sauber, meanwhile, have first-hand experience of life on both ends of F1’s stark financial spectrum having been an independent entity either side of a four-year period in which they were owned by German carmaker giants BMW.
Kaltenborn says the situation has never been as bad as this, however, and insists the sport must act now to implement a more sustainable financial model for teams such as hers before it is too late.
“It would be very bad for the sport to wait and see until teams start really vanishing and then react. You have seen that happen in Formula 1 and then we’ve tried to react in some way,” she argued.
“A lot was done in the last years starting with the Resource Restriction, which was just a first step. There were teams out there at that time that wanted a cost cap – we were not one of them at that time – and those teams that wanted it then today don’t want it. So it’s really high time we sit together and look at the sport.
“No one is saying everything should be the same. We have always had big teams, small teams, big budgets, small budgets and if I look back at times at Sauber before the BMW time (2006-2009) we were a small team. There was no cost cap at that time, there was no talk about it but we didn’t struggle like this today. So it’s time we adjust to the economic surroundings we have and put some kind of cost control.”
