But they didn't. And even if they had, it's still ridiculous that the richest teams get paid just for showing up and they don't even get the scraps.
Ridiculous yes, like I said, but I resent that being used as an excuse when you, me, everybody on this forum could have predicted the result. £70 million wouldn't have been a big enough budget to be successful ten years ago. I have sympathy for Force India wanting a fairer slice of the pie, because they have come in knowing the situation, and have managed their resources superbly. They should be rewarded. Marussia and Caterham have offered nothing but mobile speed bumps.
I'd rather watch a grid full of Marussia's and Caterham's than Ferrari's, Merc's and Red Bull's. What they can create with peanuts compared to $300million plus is quite incredible. They don't get any credit for that either, just ridicule. What happened to the affection for the poor teams?
Really? Good for you, but I wouldn't! I think it's actually embarrassing, no wonder they don't get sponsors. Years in the sport and they're always about 4 seconds off the pace... I mean, the sponsors would be shown for longer, if anybody had any interest in them squabbling over last that is. Nobody deserves to come into F1 and be competitive straight off the bat, and unlike other teams, they've categorically shown they can't progress. I just don't think people should deflect attention from the mismanagement of Marussia and Caterham. I think that debate is entirely different from the idea of fairer shares, and people should stop muddling them.
I think it comes down to pay drivers. Yes the sport has always had pay drivers prevalent towards the back, but they used to have exciting ones. They used to be able to mix it with the big boys due to reliability as well but thats long gone these days. A sign of the times I suppose The small teams are just surviving, not trying to be different or find hot talent, they can't afford to.
Caterham, Marussia and HRT came into the sport after Mosley announced he was implementing a budget cap. That was five years ago.
Yeah, I would. F1 has just become only about how much money you have to fling about. Give me a grid of full of teams all on a reasonable budget, competing on a level playing field and innovating within their means rather than the unsustainable financial arms-race we have going on right now.
well, if anybody believes anything that chap says, they deserve to go bust. That's not F1, is it? That's never been F1? You want to watch GP2 or something... Ferrari spent more money than Mercedes, Williams and Red Bull, and have spent the most pretty consistently over the past decade... so that squashes the more money = certainty of wins.
How does a budget cap guarantee that? It just means if one team is better than the others at pre-season, the others are unlikely to catch up, because they can't spend millions on copying and changing their original design. I think the budget cap is idealistic when people say it'll make F1 more competitive. Unpredictable, perhaps, more competitive? I'm inclined to say no.
It doesn't guarantee it... but it at least makes it more likely with a playing field that isn't so tipped in the direction of the big boys.
I think the distinction I'm trying to make is that Red Bull, Mercedes etc race to make profits for other parts of the business, and they achieve that by trying to be the best. Their motive for being in the sport means they have to be competitive. Meanwhile if you have privateer teams running around at the back of the grid because the likes of Tony Fernandes reckon it'll make them a tidy profit from the sports coffers, that's not something to be encouraged. As has been mentioned, the new teams were promised a budget cap, it was as binding an agreement as they were likely to get 18 months before they entered the sport when they had to start spending money. The fact it was reneged upon later was none of their fault. They were also promised they'd be able to buy engines for £5m a year. But after a short period in the sport the engine regulations have changed, and now engine contracts are £20m a year. Where do you expect backmarker teams to suddenly find £15m a year from? As eddie mentioned, sponsorship is hard enough to come by, even Mclaren haven't attracted a proper title sponsor this season, which is ridiculous for a team of that size and history. £15m is massive, that's an additional 20% of their budget being swallowed up, and no amount of cost-cutting will recoup that. I think the problem with a budget cap (and I'm basically copying what Toto Wolff said recently) is firstly where do you set the limit, and secondly how do you police it? On the first issue, presumably you have to set the budget significantly lower than what the top end teams currently spend. Do you then have to force Ferrari, Mercedes, Mclaren and Red Bull to fire 50-100 employees to be in line with the rest of the grid? Also, how do you account for infrastructure spending? If a team wants a new wind tunnel, CFD supercomputer, 3D CNC lathe, etc, does that mean they can barely afford to race for a season? On policing it, F1 teams are not a single financial entity that would be simple to audit, they've all got subsidiary companies and different branches. That's going to make it a nightmare to include in a single budget. If a Mercedes F1 employee seeks technical advice from a Mercedes Engines employee, or perhaps they work on a mutually beneficial project, how do you account for that? If Ferrari's sports car teams discover a new way to layer carbon fibre, do they have to sell that technique to the F1 team at market price? It's a logistical nightmare. That's why I'd favour making the income of each team more even, and try to balance the budgets that way, rather than an artificial cap.
This cannot be true. Literally, it can't be. The reason I'm so doubtful, is because then Caterham, Marussia and HRT would have had opportunity to sue and sue big, which has not happened. I saw these things pledged politically at the time by certain individuals, but it most certainly was not promised, and it seems foolish for teams to have taken it as such, and I doubt they did. I personally find the idea of works teams being forced into selling their engines for low amounts as preposterous. Mercedes spent £140 million on developing an engine, so they should have the only authority on what it gets sold for. Finding an engine supplier is part of the F1 process. It is not the case that F1 suddenly became too expensive for Marussia and Caterham, they have badly mismanaged their resources and miscalculated what could be done on a meagre budget.
I'm not sure a budget cap is feasible, and it is fraught with issues. But at the very least please lets get rid of the payments to Ferrari etc for just turning up. They are ridiculous. Either that, or pay everyone a bit for turning up. Instead of Bernie and CVC creaming off the money they make from the rights, pretty well all of this money should go to the teams and circuits. They provide the show. That money should be shared on a far more equitable basis, but with teams also winning bonuses commensurate with their points. It won't completely level the playing field but it will give the smaller teams a budget they can do something with, with the promise of more when they score points.
This is my point right here... CVC and Bernie are making billions of dollars off this sport while some teams are making nothing and tracks can't afford to hold races. Money is going to the wrong places. Distribute the cash fairer, cap spending at 150million or something and we might get a more balanced grid. And who doesn't want that? If the sport continues to get more and more expensive, the fewer companies and teams will be interested in joining to replace the the smaller teams as the go under, and the more likely that teams like Merc or Red Bull will pull the plug when F1 is no longer commercially viable.
The budget cap I'm talking of was somewhat more complicated than an easily understood numerical cap, rather it took the form of the Resource Restriction Agreement, which all teams agreed to for 2010 (the year the new teams joined). That was enforced by FOTA, that being in effect by all the teams. As it turns out Red Bull were the first to break it, and within a short time period stopped being followed at all. I'm not a lawyer, but suing a committee over a gentleman's agreement doesn't seem too easy. The new teams were promised a budget cap by the rest of the grid, not by F1 itself as nobody would sign up to Mosley's proposed cap. Regardless of whether or not big teams adhered to it, until 2014 the new teams had managed to be fast enough for the FIA for the proceeding 4 seasons. As to selling engines cheap, it wasn't that Bernie made Renault, Ferrari, Cosworth and Mercedes agree to sell engines that cheaply, it was simply a fair price for what was in effect an old, tried and tested engine. That engine price was also agreed by FOTA, and for FOTA to agree to anything it required the agreement of 70% of it's membership - something that wouldn't have happened if the engine suppliers (read works teams) were going to lose money by agreeing. There were too many of them to be bullied into such an agreement. 2.4 L V8's are not cutting edge, they weren't expensive to make. Since then, costs have more than tripled as the new engines required significant development, and are much more expensive to build.
I think there should be more partnerships in the sport. Red Bull and STR are partners in the most official unofficial way possible and really no one minds. Let big teams sell basic parts like chassis and entire drive trains. Would probably save the little teams money whilst allowing them more 'time' to work on aero etc. Win win really, income for some teams, money saving for others, car's will still look different and be different.
