Formula 1’s current spending limit is set at $145 million (about €135 million), a figure some teams consider too low. In recent weeks, this budget ceiling has come under great pressure due to rising inflation.
Transport and electricity costs have almost tripled compared to last year, which, according to Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff , has had an impact of eight million pounds (just over €9 million) on his budget.
This has meant that the biggest teams in the category have found themselves with an unexpected problem in meeting the spending limit, with budgets set long before the economic downturn began.
As a result, Red Bull’s Christian Horner went so far as to claim that several teams would have to miss the final races of the year to avoid going over the 2022 budget cap.
Haas CEO Steiner , whose team continues to work below the spending ceiling, believes this renewed spending cap has already dramatically improved the competition and that it is now up to the bigger guys to control their budget.
“Everything is mixing, I think as I have always said, in the short term not much will change, but in the medium and long term I think the grid will tighten even more. Therefore, we should not raise the budget cap now,” Steiner said. .
“Right now you never know who’s the best of the rest. And I think if we continue with this budget cap, and with these rules, everyone is going to get closer to the big boys little by little.”
“We all have to work with it. I’m out of a job if I tell my boss that I don’t make it to the end of the season. That’s my job. We have to get it no matter what, because if you don’t finish the season, the following year you don’t get money.”
“I think there will be nine teams that will be very happy (if Red Bull misses some races) because they won’t get any money next year and we can split it between us. For sure Ferrari will also be happy if they don’t come to the last four races.”
“I think my solution is to tell them to make it work one way or another, and I think most team managers have those same instructions.”
Toto Wolff and Andreas Seidl , are two of the team managers who are trying to temporarily increase the budget cap to offset rising transport and utility costs while maintaining the integrity of the current cap in the long run, which is a solution that Steiner could support, since the transport is organized by the FOM itself.
“Let’s just take the transport costs, I would say that this year they are three million more expensive than last year, and let’s raise the limit to those three million, because that is easy to monitor, since it is managed by the FOM,” he explained.
“So you can’t say ‘Oh, I’ve spent more money,’ because FOM sends you the bills. It’s all very transparent.”
“And then, next year, if transport costs go down again, it will be very easy to monitor and control. If they go down again, we will remove those extra three million,” concluded Haas .
