'It's up to the F1 teams themselves to deal with the budget cap properly'
It's not often that the rival teams of Red Bull Racing, Ferrari and Mercedes agree, but when it comes to the budget cap, they do. The top teams would like to see an increase in the limit due to inflation, but former Formula One driver Johnny Herbert believes they would be better off looking at their own budgets.
'F1 teams must manage budget cap in the right way'
The budget cap was introduced to bring the field closer together and reduce costs within the sport, and in this Herbert says the measure has succeeded. However, the top teams say they are struggling to meet the budget, partly because of inflation caused by the war in Ukraine. As a result, they fear they will not be able to make all the developments they want. Christian Horner even fears that a number of teams will not make it to the end of the season.
The three-time F1 winner believes that the teams concerned should take care not to spend too much money themselves. "It's a money management race," he says. "Many teams, like McLaren, don't even get to the $140 million limit. You just have to manage it in the right way; everyone knew how much money they would need for the season."
However, McLaren itself recently indicated that it would be "virtually impossible" to meet the budget ceiling. This would make it one of seven teams behind an increase in the limit: only Alpine, Alfa Romeo and Williams would be opposed. Haas team boss Guenther Steiner also criticized the statements of the top teams, but partly due to the team's two locations in the United States and Italy, Haas also faces very high transportation costs.
If they're going to have a budget cap, they also must have budget floor, a minimum a team has to spend, probably around 10 million dollar ceiling In this way you actually might get closer competition. To pretend merely putting a ceiling on spending in any way will produce closer results is the product of flawed thinking As long as you have teams spending tens of millions of dollars less than the cap you'll have teams that are merely on track to drive around in cars that are only there to collect end of year money I see plenty on here insisting teams have to "just live with the cap" but I never see those same people suggesting a solution for teams like Haas who spent 80 million dollars last season, 65 million dollars below last year's cap. It's teams like these that have a say over the cap? It makes a joke of the cap that teams who aren't really there to compete should argue against teams spending to win when they don't even intend to drive anywhere but straight to the F1 Gala to pick up a cheque for being a total embarrassment to the stated goal of the sport
Welcome to IndyCar racing. F1 is turning into a joke. Teams like Maclaren and Haas and AR don't reach the maximum spend ....maybe thats why they struggle to perform. But this new type of "fake competition ' teams can't spend and join Ferrari,Redbull and Mercedes at the front. Let's in short throttle back the spend and that impacts on performance, now we have a competitive sport. How is that F1 . Next will be off the shelf parts, aero to suspension. The DNA of f1 is being eroded and its a sad sight to see. When a F1 team has to ask this question "should be develop this idea ? .....no we can't we have a budget cap remember. Or like Haas is saying to Mick dont push mate you crash we have that buget cap to maintain . This is accounting not racing ?
Very sad indeed. The 80's and 90's had so many phenomenal designs and they kept banning them. F1 is as much a design competition as it is about the drivers. Oh, well. Good times for sure.
This guy claims to be a “graduate” yet doesn’t know how to use an apostrophe – something they teach you in elementary school. It’s 80s and 90s. Not “80’s and 90’s”. *Shakes head*.
What can I say? The people here in Sydney, Australia and Australia in general where I am from are not the sharpest. Don't even get me started on the poor quality of mechanical engineers.
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