Faced with soaring costs, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner called on Saturday on the sidelines of the Monaco F1 Grand Prix to find “a common sense solution” in the direction of raising the spending cap.
“It is a case of force majeure, it is a situation, obviously, that none of us could have foreseen, which increased the costs. Pragmatically, we just have to find a common sense solution,” explained Horner.
The idea is also defended by the other “top teams” – Ferrari and Mercedes: “I think the only thing we can do (…) is to give ourselves a bit of free air, to increase the budget ceiling in the face of inflation, which is something that we never foresee, ”assured Mattia Binotto at Scuderia, certain that the budget will be exceeded at Ferrari.
Last weekend, Horner had already said that “some seven of the teams entered (out of ten, editor’s note) were probably going to have to miss the last four races to be under the ceiling this year”.
Alfa Romeo and Alpine are not of the same opinion, however. “We are in a situation where, sooner or later, we will have to stop the development of the cars, because we will be at the limit of our budget, and I think that everyone can achieve this”, assured Frédéric Vasseur, boss of Alfa Romeo.
“I think that it is possible. When there is a will, there is a way. We have set a budget ceiling, and we must stick to it,” defended Otmar Szafnauer.
The Alpine boss explained that “most teams establish their budget in November-December, for the following year. At that time, inflation was already over seven percent…we took that into consideration when we made our budgets.”
At McLaren, Team Principal Andreas Seidl, a fervent defender of the budget cap introduced in 2021, is now more nuanced: “We are always pushing to make sure that we introduce the budget cap (…) but I think that if we we have exceptional circumstances like at the moment (…) we must always be able to have common sense discussions and find good solutions for sport”.
The decision to introduce maximum spending for teams in a season was taken in 2020 with the aim of reducing budget gaps between big and small teams and improving competition. Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull were particularly affected.
The budget cap has been lowered from 145 million dollars (132 million euros) last year to 140 million dollars (127 million euros) this year. It is to increase to 135 million (123 million) in 2023.
