Press reports of serious financial problems at Lotus [split topic]

Lotus: F1 costs must come down
http://uk.eurosport....-122253945.html
Lotus boss Eric Boullier says the costs of competing in Formula 1 must be brought down in order to safeguard the future of the current grid.

There is nothing like the team that was most efficient in utilizing its budget to produce top cars talking about the need to bring the costs down in F1. It is time fore FIA to intervene. We have gone past the times of $300 million budgets. Such huge budgets is a way for the established teams to make sure they remain there and nobody comes close. The budget should come down and it would make for a more competitive series. Something like $150 million or less would still reward the top teams that are consistently performing to remain at the top and generate money. Anything more is just money buying success and a sport should not be like that.

Try explaining to a non-fan how much teams spend designing a front wing and they'll just laugh at you, and rightly so.

And carry in racing for 20 Laps when it's trashed as its not really effecting the car!! LOL

Lotus: F1 costs must come down
http://uk.eurosport....-122253945.html
Lotus boss Eric Boullier says the costs of competing in Formula 1 must be brought down in order to safeguard the future of the current grid.

There is nothing like the team that was most efficient in utilizing its budget to produce top cars talking about the need to bring the costs down in F1. It is time fore FIA to intervene. We have gone past the times of $300 million budgets. Such huge budgets is a way for the established teams to make sure they remain there and nobody comes close. The budget should come down and it would make for a more competitive series. Something like $150 million or less would still reward the top teams that are consistently performing to remain at the top and generate money. Anything more is just money buying success and a sport should not be like that.

The stickers on Williams car today compared with 5-10 show exactly how interested household brands are in F1 sponsorship. BBC limited coverage isn't exactly talking helping the case either.

And carry in racing for 20 Laps when it's trashed as its not really effecting the car!! LOL

This.

And it's always the top spending teams who don't change damaged front wings despite spending most resources on adding winglets which are more fancy in wind tunnels than they are useful in race conditions.

Lotus: F1 costs must come down
http://uk.eurosport....-122253945.html
Lotus boss Eric Boullier says the costs of competing in Formula 1 must be brought down in order to safeguard the future of the current grid.

There is nothing like the team that was most efficient in utilizing its budget to produce top cars talking about the need to bring the costs down in F1. It is time fore FIA to intervene. We have gone past the times of $300 million budgets. Such huge budgets is a way for the established teams to make sure they remain there and nobody comes close. The budget should come down and it would make for a more competitive series. Something like $150 million or less would still reward the top teams that are consistently performing to remain at the top and generate money. Anything more is just money buying success and a sport should not be like that.

I'd prefer a budget cap in F1 instead of rules aiming to cut costs. The budget cap would enable less strict technical regulations, enabling more innovation.

F1 is paid for by advertising. With the rise of the internet, the rear wing of a Lotus is probably not worth as much as a click-through on Facebook. Without the advertising dollar, the bubble that is F1 may find a prick bigger than Bernie.

Interesting that he directly names Red Bull/Ferrari/Mercedes as the remaining teams left who can still spend big. Is there a rift developing on the grid between the haves and have-nots?

Interesting that he directly names Red Bull/Ferrari/Mercedes as the remaining teams left who can still spend big. Is there a rift developing on the grid between the haves and have-nots?

Do you mean e.g. Macca wouldn't be one of those?

I think he only mentioned those three as they are racing for wins now, he said "like Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes". That can include some other teams, too.

Lotus: F1 costs must come down
http://uk.eurosport....-122253945.html
Lotus boss Eric Boullier says the costs of competing in Formula 1 must be brought down in order to safeguard the future of the current grid.

There is nothing like the team that was most efficient in utilizing its budget to produce top cars talking about the need to bring the costs down in F1. It is time fore FIA to intervene. We have gone past the times of $300 million budgets.

If they cannot afford operating at their current lever, they have the option to reduce their own budget and other teams will pass them on the grid. That is not a problem for Bernie, but for Genii who own the value of the team. I guess Marussia is way down on the budget. There have been times when only 2 teams can take podium finishes on merit and others race for lesser positions. I'd like larger number of competitive teams however...

Edited by Mauseri, 08 August 2013 - 21:10.

Interesting that he directly names Red Bull/Ferrari/Mercedes as the remaining teams left who can still spend big. Is there a rift developing on the grid between the haves and have-nots?

The finances have been a problem in F1 for quite some time, but somehow a lid was kept on the boiling issue. The Lotus issue could be the first signs of boiling over. Because we are able to see something very rare here. In all the aforementioned scenarios, the status quo always remained. The big spenders were always spending big and were competing within themselves for the top prize. The marginal spenders were spending whatever they could, but they were only fight for the midfield prizes. So amongst them, if one loses money, the other also lost money and even otherwise it did not matter much to F1. Sauber was 5th best team one year, 8th best team next year, Williams was 8th best team one year and 5th best team one year, nobody cared. Everyone assumed just inconsistent design of cars and some inconsistent performance related sponsorship uncertainties. But with Lotus all those issues have been bunked. Here is a team that is midfield in terms of its resources and spending power, yet they have clearly proved that they can come up with championship contending cars right from the beginning of the season. They sustain the performance fairly well through the season as well. Last year Raikkonen had a mathematical chance to win the championship until the final two races of the season. This season also, they have been doing well, even better than last year. But the fianance pinch they feel is obvious. Lot of people have mooted that the only thing that is stopping them to go even further is money. They can keep up with Ferrari, Red Bull or McLaren in terms of development, but they never have a chance to put one one them, they can't jump them. Raikkonen has explicitly stated that money is the only reason that other teams are doing better than Lotus and they don't lack skills and brilliance compared to the other teams. Raikkonen is not known to make such sharp comments. So, yes, Lotus is a clear example of a team feeling the money pinch and not being able to get ahead of other top teams because of lack of money. They may still be able to build the team into a secure future like McLaren did in the 70s and 80s. But that will be inspite of the financial state of world/F1 rather than that being the norm. These are teams that have fought against the odds.

FIA interfering is the only easy solution to this and they have the power to do it particularly in the absence of any Concorde Agreement. Have-nots could lock horns with haves and could create a dead-lock situation some time in the near future. But it would be very complicated and it is difficult to stage (it is possible).

Edited by SpaMaster, 08 August 2013 - 21:47.

The weird thing is that Lotus' debts are much lower than, say, Chelsea's, Man City's, Man Utd's, Real Madrid's, Barcelona's and so on. Indeed their debt is lower than that of Bolton Wanderers. But you won't get all of those football teams in the top two in the world.

Shows you the relative power of football...

The weird thing is that Lotus' debts are much lower than, say, Chelsea's, Man City's, Man Utd's, Real Madrid's, Barcelona's and so on. Indeed their debt is lower than that of Bolton Wanderers. But you won't get all of those football teams in the top two in the world.

Shows you the relative power of football...

it's not comparable. Football clubs usually have debts to shareholders (Bolton Wanderers that you mentioned for example, out of it's total debt of about 136m, 125m is debt to the owner of the club). Plus they have assets they can sell, in the form of footballers. In F1 Raikkonen has 0 resale value for Lotus, they get nothing if he signs for Red Bull, whereas Bolton get cash if they sell a player to Barcelona or whatever.

In F1 Raikkonen has 0 resale value for Lotus, they get nothing if he signs for Red Bull, whereas Bolton get cash if they sell a player to Barcelona or whatever.

I think Marussia have more chance of selling a player to Barcelona.

The weird thing is that Lotus' debts are much lower than, say, Chelsea's, Man City's, Man Utd's, Real Madrid's, Barcelona's and so on. Indeed their debt is lower than that of Bolton Wanderers. But you won't get all of those football teams in the top two in the world.

Shows you the relative power of football...

...and even in the Premier League, I get the impression that, outside the top half dozen, clubs are now finding it difficult to attract blue chip companies as shirt sponsors. If you look at the lower clubs, their sponsors increasingly seem to be bookmakers or usurers.

Or worse. But then again the top clubs can run at a loss as they are vanity projects, money laundering exercises, reputation whitewashing or insurance against being poloniumed by Putin. (The problem with which being that it therefore becomes impossible to compete without one. Even the much-lauded Swansea City had a £30m free gift of a ground given to them - after they had gone into administration...)

It's surprising though that none of that ilk has gone into F1. Perhaps because the big boys are all in the same series, whereas if Real Madrid don't win the Champs League they'll probably pick up another trophy domestically.

Edited by ensign14, 08 August 2013 - 22:16.

Well I'd say that PDVSA's sponsorship of Williams is pretty close to a vanity project as is the Marussia F1 team.

The weird thing is that Lotus' debts are much lower than, say, Chelsea's, Man City's, Man Utd's, Real Madrid's, Barcelona's and so on. Indeed their debt is lower than that of Bolton Wanderers. But you won't get all of those football teams in the top two in the world.

Shows you the relative power of football...

Yeah but aren't the incomes of Chelsea/Manchesters/the Spanish Two, etc much higher than F1 teams?

What ever happened to the Honeywell deal?

Autosport: Lotus F1 team hits out at reports of financial trouble

On the €120 million debt, anybody half-smart can find out that number by going to Companies House records and will see that out of that, over 90 million is not 'real' debt but shareholder loans made to the company," Lopez told AUTOSPORT.

"The salaries have always been paid on time and there has never been even a hint of a potential strike by our people at the factory.

"We usually don't comment on these things, but in this case it's unfair on the people working in the company to be saying things like that."

Yeah but aren't the incomes of Chelsea/Manchesters/the Spanish Two, etc much higher than F1 teams?

Man Utd's revenue was £320.3m last season. That'll be presumably even higher this coming season as a bumper new TV deal means on average an extra £60m per team spread over the next few seasons.

That's way beyond what an F1 team can pull in.

Autosport: Lotus F1 team hits out at reports of financial trouble

May be we should change the title then? To 'Lotus Finance Situation' or 'F1 Finance Situation - Eg.: Lotus' something like that. I think this topic has sparked a discussion on the finance habits of F1 in general.

Autosport: Lotus F1 team hits out at reports of financial trouble

So he admits team owns 30 millions to outsiders and rest 90 millions to investors...well that's not very promesing either....and lying that salaries has been paid on time, while he himself,Boullier and Kimi has said that at least Kimi's salaries are and have been late almost always during these 1 and half years. Anyways hopefully they get their act together as they are fantastic team.

Edited by Vesuvius, 09 August 2013 - 19:02.

Oh come on, you can't generalize driver's salary as "employees'" salary. Driver's salary is huge compared to other employees' salary. And you can't categorize invetor's loan as debt. They are investors and they give that money for a specific purpose - investment for future. I am actually glad that the team has made it work this way or the other. To me it looks like except for Kimi's salary, nothing in the factory is delayed, shelved or compromised because of lack of money so far. It may hurt in the future. But so far they have done all they can to give their full weight behind the present championship. I am sure there are quite a few top teams who are frustrated and embarrassed by how efficiently Lotus has performed given their tight finance situation, compared to those teams who have pretty much endless supply of money. By top teams, you could include everyone except Red Bull in that list.

Edited by SpaMaster, 09 August 2013 - 19:29.

Autosport: Lotus F1 team hits out at reports of financial trouble

LOL! If the 90 million Euros the team owns the shareholders is not real debt, does that mean that the shareholders, i.e. Genii Capital don't want their money back? Or even interest on them? In that case it should be classified as equity. Since it's not it's Geniis intention to get them back - and if not, a 90 million write-down would leave a pretty big hole in Geniis balance sheet. BTW it would be interesting to know whose money Genii are lending to Lotus, as I'd guess it's not only Lopez' and Lux' private funds? As I tell my kids, the shitty thing about borrowing money is that you have to pay them back.

Edited by Hans V, 09 August 2013 - 19:37.

They can deny all they want to press but reporters don't just come up with stories.

Real shame if they are that deep into red.



Also baffling that they cant secure sponsors with such strong car, arguably the second-third car on grid and they can't find investors.

Edited by BiH, 09 August 2013 - 19:46.

Yes, I do find some fault with them in not being able to find sponsors that would somewhat address the financial strain. This is probably the only thing that I hold the team to be somewhat responsible given that I have found them to be the most impressive team in the past 4 years (in terms of resource efficiency). They probably took some chance in leaving out smaller fishes in the hope of some bigger fish. It might still be okay if they secure the future soundly with the Inifiniti partnership. But there is a risk that they have gone this far without much to show in terms of new major sponsors. I agree that a lot of it has to do with the financial model of F1, but Lotus has its share of responsibility for their position. With every passing day, the chances of retaining Raikkonen become less as well.

They can deny all they want to press but reporters don't just come up with stories.

Oh yes they do, and they exaggerate to project a sense of crisis.

http://www.auto-moto...as-7534594.html

Financial problems

Edited by V3TT3L, 13 August 2013 - 03:30.

That's Lopez' personal collection. It's not him having financial problems, it's Lotus.

Oh come on, you can't generalize driver's salary as "employees'" salary. Driver's salary is huge compared to other employees' salary. And you can't categorize invetor's loan as debt. They are investors and they give that money for a specific purpose - investment for future. I am actually glad that the team has made it work this way or the other. To me it looks like except for Kimi's salary, nothing in the factory is delayed, shelved or compromised because of lack of money so far. It may hurt in the future. But so far they have done all they can to give their full weight behind the present championship. I am sure there are quite a few top teams who are frustrated and embarrassed by how efficiently Lotus has performed given their tight finance situation, compared to those teams who have pretty much endless supply of money. By top teams, you could include everyone except Red Bull in that list.

Lopez is not telling the truth.

On several occasions in the past 18 months have factory salaries been paid out to Lotus F1 employees late. This is fact!

On several occasions in the past 18 months have factory salaries been paid out to Lotus F1 employees late. This is fact!

How do you know this is a fact? You just read rumours on websites that may be true or may be false. Do you work in the Lotus factory that you can claim this as a fact?

How do you know this is a fact? You just read rumours on websites that may be true or may be false. Do you work in the Lotus factory that you can claim this as a fact?

The more people back their statements up with 'that is a fact' the less credible they usually are

Perfect example of how broken F1 financing is. We need serious cost-cutting coupled with a much better Concorde Agreement.

F1 teams always have, and always will, spend beyond their means. It happens in all sports. The rewards for success are so high that they'll always spend more to attain it.

It's happened since the dawn of time and isn't going to change. They'll find ways past budget caps etc. You can give them more prize money to current expenditure and then they'll just spend more anyway.

It has always been this way.

The current situation in F1 is really a good example of extreme neoliberal capitalism in action, all money flows to the top of the pyramid, in this case: the top teams, this is exactly what Lotus has recently been complaining about: that the top 3 teams are blocking all forms of budget caps and off course there is a system in place that grands more income to the top teams than to the rest, but without these smaller teams there would be no show. We have seen this in other sports too: for example in soccer there used to be a European champions cup where the champion in each country was allowed to participate in, then there was a champions league and after a couple of seasons all large countries where allowed to send 3 or 4 teams to a competition that was previously just reserved for national champions. As a result the big teams from large countries became richer and got most of the tv or prize money and the teams from smaller countries became poorer (in relative terms, compared to the big teams). The world works the same way: in America 2% of the population holds the same amount of money as 90% (or more). We see this in F1 too, the big teams get richer as the smaller ones go bust trying to stay competitive. But there is a logic behind the reasoning why the large and even the medium sized teams don't want to see budget caps. You see: the higher the budget in a team, the higher the total value is. So if you ever want to sell your team you would want it's value to be as high as possible, that is why Genii Capital saw the Renault (now Lotus team) as a good investment: keep it's value high, even increase it, and then sell it to Renault when they want to come back or to another manufacturer: but that plan didn't work out and now they have to pay back loans to banks that they used to finance their investment. The top teams also get higher sponsor budgets because their sport and their team has a higher value. The moment a budget cap will come in place, the value of F1 teams will decrease and so will the money that sponsors will allocate. Combine this logic with the economic credit crisis that the banking system has created worldwide and you have a volatile situation with a sport that still spends money like before and still has ever increasing budgets and you have a sport that is out of touch with reality. More and more sponsors have quit F1 (the tabac ban didn't hep although Ferrari still works with Marlboro) and the economic reality will no doubt put several teams out of business if there are no budget caps introduced and if Bernie doesn't provide a much more honest division of tv & prize money (which is something he will probably never do).

Edited by William Hunt, 14 August 2013 - 14:49.

F1 teams always have, and always will, spend beyond their means. It happens in all sports. The rewards for success are so high that they'll always spend more to attain it.

It's happened since the dawn of time and isn't going to change. They'll find ways past budget caps etc. You can give them more prize money to current expenditure and then they'll just spend more anyway.

It has always been this way.

And teams have gone bust as well.

Though it would be sad to see Enstone or Sauber or whichever team disappear, we also saw multiple championship-winning teams Brabham, Lotus and Tyrrell go broke. That's the way it goes, I'm afraid. It's just that the amounts of money are 10 times what we saw some 20 years ago.

It has always been this way.

That has to be one of the weakest, and unfortunately one of the more often used arguments in the world.

http://www.auto-moto...as-7534594.html

Financial problems

Well, if the money from the delayed Infinity Racing deal never arrives Lopez can always sell that mighty impressive personal collection of his...

I know you aren't serious, but that's going to be what.. 5M absolute tops? Most of the stuffin there looks modern ish.

Thats about a week in F1. For a cheap team.

Perfect example of how broken F1 financing is. We need serious cost-cutting coupled with a much better Concorde Agreement.

Nope - we need a fairer distribution of F1 wealth. Like so many situations, in F1 the middle-man is taking all of the money, whilst teams and tracks struggle

I know you aren't serious, but that's going to be what.. 5M absolute tops? Most of the stuffin there looks modern ish.

Thats about a week in F1. For a cheap team.

And ask yourself 'would you buy a car from that man?'

And ask yourself 'would you buy a car from that man?'

Well who cars as long as the price is god.

LOL! If the 90 million Euros the team owns the shareholders is not real debt, does that mean that the shareholders, i.e. Genii Capital don't want their money back? Or even interest on them? In that case it should be classified as equity. Since it's not it's Geniis intention to get them back - and if not, a 90 million write-down would leave a pretty big hole in Geniis balance sheet. BTW it would be interesting to know whose money Genii are lending to Lotus, as I'd guess it's not only Lopez' and Lux' private funds? As I tell my kids, the shitty thing about borrowing money is that you have to pay them back.

Of course Genii will want their money back. But the key difference you're missing is that they won't get their money back if they insist on it being repaid and that results in the team folding. Genii's route to getting their money back is through increasing the value of the team and bringing in new investors. The money from those investors will go towards servicing the debt mostly. This will be either indirectly via repayments once cash flows into the team, or directly by "selling" the rights to the debt to the new investors.

Basically, the big thing is that when the debt is owed to shareholders, the shareholders have an incentive to not be pushy about reclaiming it. Their interest is in keeping the company afloat so that the debt can be repaid "eventually". Shareholders will therefore claim repayments as and when the company is capable of paying - in this way they help keep the company running by not forcing it into a potentially crippling repayment schedule. Non-shareholders, on the other hand, usually want their money back on a fixed schedule and when that schedule starts slipping too much, they won't hesitate to take action to reclaim as much as they can even if it cripples the company.

#f1 Good news for Lotus team, my sources say this deal is quite significant http://www.lotusf1team.com/new-heights-with-emaar-properties.html …

James Allen / Twitter

Edited by Owen, 05 September 2013 - 11:45.

so it is true that they didn't pay Kimi his salary. TBH I couldn't believe that. Doesn't bode well for the next season...

why didn't you believe before? Kimi has said many times before that Lotus hasn't paid..

Haven't seen that. And there always were reports they have some issues, yet they seemed to be doing fine, investing in the team's infrastructure.

@Charlie_Yeomans 34m

@andrewbensonf1 I live not a mile away from the garage and I have friends who work there. A lot of people have been underpaid/unpaid

 

@Charlie_Yeomans 34m

@andrewbensonf1 2/2 for many months now they are struggling big time

I heard Mika Salo said that Kimi is paying travel fees and hotels from his own pocket. It was apparently said on a Finnish broadcast few races back. Anyone got info on that? Surely Lotus situation can't be that bad?

I heard Mika Salo said that Kimi is paying travel fees and hotels from his own pocket. It was apparently said on a Finnish broadcast few races back. Anyone got info on that? Surely Lotus situation can't be that bad?

i think you are confusing Button (brawn gp 2009) with kimi there. but this is going OT. they've recently announce partnership with Emaar properties , so i don't think the situation has deteriorated that far ... yet. 

Edited by eronrules, 19 September 2013 - 13:25.

I heard Mika Salo said that Kimi is paying travel fees and hotels from his own pocket. It was apparently said on a Finnish broadcast few races back. Anyone got info on that? Surely Lotus situation can't be that bad?

So much for the unmotivated Kimi only in it for money myth.