F1 News

Todt pleads for drastic reduction of budget limit: "Feel this at every level"

11 April 2020 at 10:07
  • GPblog.com

As a result of the COVID-19 corona crisis, a number of Formula 1 teams are in trouble. That is why meetings on a further reduction of the budget limit have been started. It will be difficult to get all teams in line, but FIA President Jean Todt is convinced that this reduction is necessary.

"I'm sure many small and medium sized teams, suppliers and manufacturers will go over their programs again and then perhaps come to the conclusion that they should stop," says Todt in conversation with motorsport-total.com. "Corona is going to cost society a total of between 300 billion and three trillion. 25 million people are going to lose their jobs, we're going to feel that on every level."

100 or 150 million

The teams agreed last year that the annual budget would be reduced to $175 million from 2021 onwards. According to Todt, that amount should be reduced even further. Some teams want to go to a limit of 100 million, while big teams like Ferrari are not prepared to go beyond 150 million for the time being. According to Todt that's not good enough yet.

"What matters now is how much support we have for this. The small and large teams look at this in different ways of course. So we have to convince the large teams that the original plan is not drastic enough, and we are working on that now, but the proposal that is there is still not good enough".