Veteran Formula 1 designer and Caterham's technical director Mike Gascoyne has said that the FIA needs to impose a budget cap on F1 “for the good of the sport”.
As the pressure intensifies for F1 to act on costs by the end of this month, so that a structure can be in place for the 2013 season, the last few days have seen interventions from Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo, calling for dramatic cost reductions and FIA president Jean Todt promising FIA action to do that.
RRA was a failure
Speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival yesterday evening in a talk on “Innovation in F1”, Gascoyne said that the Resource Restriction Agreement (RRA) has been proven to be a failure as the top teams have found ways to carry on spending pre-credit crunch levels of budget and that a budget cap is the only sustainable answer. He believes that there is plenty of scope for F1 to maintain its position as a hotbed of innovation, while containing the costs.
“I want freedom and innovation and I think we need a budget cap but we should leave people free to spend on whatever you like within that cap,” he said. “So if you want to spend it all in the wind tunnel or on some trick new innovation then you can do that, but there is a limit and there has to be a limit.
“In today’s economy you can’t be spending hundreds of millions of euros a year to do 20 races and you don’t need to,” he continued. “Small teams like Caterham are proof of that. We’re two and a half years into our F1 career and we are now qualifying 1.5 secs to 2 secs off pole.”
“If you want to introduce a budget cap it’s got to be a ramped thing because you have teams out there spending 200M to 300M euros a year and you’ve got others doing it on 70M,” says Gascoyne. “If you just say ‘everyone has to work off 80M,’ that’s not going to work.
Inherent selfishness
“You’ve always got the problem of inherent selfishness from the teams; they (the top team) have got the money and they want to spend it. Ultimately you are going to have to impose it and get it through because you are never going to get agreement.
Most of the teams feel that the only way forward is for the FIA to regulate costs and FIA president Jean Todt told Autosport yesterday that the FIA is determined to play its part, particularly with reference to the new 2014 hybrid engines.
The private teams worry about the high initial costs of introducing these engines, to cover development costs by manufacturers and some are proposing delaying or putting off these engines altogether. But the FIA, Renault and Mercedes are adamant that the sport needs to move with the times with more efficient hybrid engines.
“It is true that the [2014] package will be more expensive, but it is also true that the FIA has been in consultation with the engine suppliers in order to reduce the cost increase,” Gascoyne said.
“For example we have already agreed to a reduction in the number of power units. From eight per driver per season in 2012, we will reduce this to five per driver in 2014 and to four per driver per season in 2015,” Gascoyne explained.
As the pressure intensifies for F1 to act on costs by the end of this month, so that a structure can be in place for the 2013 season, the last few days have seen interventions from Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo, calling for dramatic cost reductions and FIA president Jean Todt promising FIA action to do that.
RRA was a failure
Speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival yesterday evening in a talk on “Innovation in F1”, Gascoyne said that the Resource Restriction Agreement (RRA) has been proven to be a failure as the top teams have found ways to carry on spending pre-credit crunch levels of budget and that a budget cap is the only sustainable answer. He believes that there is plenty of scope for F1 to maintain its position as a hotbed of innovation, while containing the costs.
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| Vitaly Petrov, Caterham (Photo: Caterham) |
“I want freedom and innovation and I think we need a budget cap but we should leave people free to spend on whatever you like within that cap,” he said. “So if you want to spend it all in the wind tunnel or on some trick new innovation then you can do that, but there is a limit and there has to be a limit.
“In today’s economy you can’t be spending hundreds of millions of euros a year to do 20 races and you don’t need to,” he continued. “Small teams like Caterham are proof of that. We’re two and a half years into our F1 career and we are now qualifying 1.5 secs to 2 secs off pole.”
“If you want to introduce a budget cap it’s got to be a ramped thing because you have teams out there spending 200M to 300M euros a year and you’ve got others doing it on 70M,” says Gascoyne. “If you just say ‘everyone has to work off 80M,’ that’s not going to work.
Inherent selfishness
“You’ve always got the problem of inherent selfishness from the teams; they (the top team) have got the money and they want to spend it. Ultimately you are going to have to impose it and get it through because you are never going to get agreement.
Most of the teams feel that the only way forward is for the FIA to regulate costs and FIA president Jean Todt told Autosport yesterday that the FIA is determined to play its part, particularly with reference to the new 2014 hybrid engines.
The private teams worry about the high initial costs of introducing these engines, to cover development costs by manufacturers and some are proposing delaying or putting off these engines altogether. But the FIA, Renault and Mercedes are adamant that the sport needs to move with the times with more efficient hybrid engines.
“It is true that the [2014] package will be more expensive, but it is also true that the FIA has been in consultation with the engine suppliers in order to reduce the cost increase,” Gascoyne said.
“For example we have already agreed to a reduction in the number of power units. From eight per driver per season in 2012, we will reduce this to five per driver in 2014 and to four per driver per season in 2015,” Gascoyne explained.