During the 2022 Spanish Grand Prix, Christian Horner , director of Red Bull, assured that more than half of the grid could miss the last races of the season if the FIA does not increase the budget limit imposed for the current course.
Due to inflation and the new regulations, which mean that each development in the single-seater marks the difference with respect to rivals, some teams are above their cost forecasts only after contesting the first six races of the campaign.
Despite the loss of Russia, which will not have a replacement, reducing the calendar from 23 to 22 races, the feeling that several teams will not make it to the end of the season is real. Despite this, in some teams, such as Alpine, that would not be a big problem, rather the opposite.
Reflecting on this after the race at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Otmar Szafnauer explained why they are against raising the budget cap for the 2022 season.
“We’re not in favor of that. We set the budgets a while ago and anticipated a little bit of inflation. So if you look back in December, the RPI was already at 7%. And most teams do their budgets between November and December”.
“So for us, it was not a surprise, we planned it and we are still under the limit, even though we did not plan for costs as high as what we are experiencing now. If we can do it, the others can too. So I am not in favor of increasing it.
When he was reminded of Horner’s words, that as many as seven teams would be almost forced to miss the last four races, the Alpine man replied excitedly.
“That would be really positive! It would move us up in the championship… Should we start planning for that, or was it just being overdone?”
Szafnauer believes that any team on the current grid can control its expenses in such a way that it does not exceed the budget limit, trying to expose the big brands that prefer to complain to the FIA to continue wasting money instead of committing to a financial regulation that try to even out the competition between the strongest and the weakest.
“I know what our budget is and I know the budgets I’ve worked with in the past and there’s always a lot of money going into development for a year, especially when the regulations are new.”
“When transportation costs go up by 2.5 or 3.5 million, but your development budget is 20 million, can’t you make your development budget 17 million and stay under the cap? Yes, you can.” But that limits your development and you’re in a development race. So it’s easier to have the money and go to the FIA to push for them to raise the limit and keep your budget at the same level.” Pointing to multiple teams.
If the FIA ends up agreeing to raise the spending cap, Szafnauer believes it could be a very dangerous decision for Formula 1, for all that it could mean in the future.
“Let’s say inflation is 7%. Or 10%, because that makes the math easier for me. The budget cap is 135, if you add that 10%, you bring it up above 145. And a Once you start doing that, the next year, you don’t add another 10, you probably add 14 and a half, and so on, then before you know it, we’re back to where we were before,” the Romanian-American concluded.
