Budget cap and less technical restrictions, would it work?

How would you monitor the expenditure? 

Require all participants to submit contractual details to some monitoring agency.

Expel anyone found paying under the table, would probably happen to a couple of teams after a handful of years.

Other sports have had budget cap scandals.

This suggests that it is possible to police and that cheats will be caught from time to time.

People will ALWAYS cheat.

F1 already has technical regulations. They manage to monitor then some of the time.

Max speaking about the idea here: http://www.autosport...t.php/id/115425

The lower your budget the more freedoms you would have which would result in a £50m team being close behind a £500m team. It's an interesting idea that I could see would benefit the lower teams and the sport as a whole. His ultimate solution is the f1 rights income being evenly split amongst the teams to pay their expenses for the season. Anything on top such as sponsorship income they get to keep as profit.

Max speaking about the idea here: http://www.autosport...t.php/id/115425

 

The lower your budget the more freedoms you would have which would result in a £50m team being close behind a £500m team. It's an interesting idea that I could see would benefit the lower teams and the sport as a whole. His ultimate solution is the f1 rights income being evenly split amongst the teams to pay their expenses for the season. Anything on top such as sponsorship income they get to keep as profit.

It sounds good on paper but I guess the downfall is that major marques like Merc, Ferrari, red Bull, Mclaren don't want to have an even playing field and if they lose their competitive advantage then I suspect they wouldn't be interested in competing in the sport any more. Is f1 really going to survive with the likes of Force India and Williams as the major players? I doubt it. The genii is well and truly out of the bottle, F1 is a major commercial entity and as such lots of money will be spent by teams wanting to compete in it.

You people are so ignorant sometimes. If you have a financial free for all you'll have less competition, and after not too long, fewer teams.

And the same time, many are horrible naive at how impossible it is to do a budget cap in a r&d environment... Cap would only work if drivers salaries were the only cost! Which it isn't...teams like Ferrari McLaren Williams etc all have non f1 projects that generate income and those sub companies could easy be setup and funded by non f1 revenue but do a significant amount of r&d for the F1 counterpart. Bang... Loophole that is unpluggable.. Budget cap in sports like hockey, basketball etc work simply because a players salaries as a function of a teams budget is controllable.. But in a non spec series like f1..... All this stupidity of a budget cap is ludicrous.. Teams would setup many off shore companies away from eyes of the fia.. He'll.. Ferrari and Mercedes Honda etc. could so easily hide resources within their road car companies and multitude of divisions the fia would be impossible to police as those companies could be legit in developing tech for road car using F1 like innovations Yadda Yadda..

It sounds good on paper but I guess the downfall is that major marques like Merc, Ferrari, red Bull, Mclaren don't want to have an even playing field and if they lose their competitive advantage then I suspect they wouldn't be interested in competing in the sport any more. Is f1 really going to survive with the likes of Force India and Williams as the major players? I doubt it. The genii is well and truly out of the bottle, F1 is a major commercial entity and as such lots of money will be spent by teams wanting to compete in it.

Edited by Paco, 18 August 2014 - 14:36.

Well, a Ferrari fan would say that.  Ferrari need to spent four times as much as the opposition to have a chance of winning.

In a theoretical world where it could be enforced, perhaps it would work.

I don't think they will ever be able to effectively enforce a budget cap though, especially for the big manufacturers who can easily hide some development costs in a different part of their company.

Max speaking about the idea here: http://www.autosport...t.php/id/115425
 
The lower your budget the more freedoms you would have which would result in a £50m team being close behind a £500m team. It's an interesting idea that I could see would benefit the lower teams and the sport as a whole. His ultimate solution is the f1 rights income being evenly split amongst the teams to pay their expenses for the season. Anything on top such as sponsorship income they get to keep as profit.

How can you enforce a budget cap when no 2 teams are the same? Any excess expenditure can be, by some creative accounting, be attributed to another dept....marketing, PR etc or, in the case of Mercedes & Ferrari, to engine development. After all these 2 [along with Renault, who are no longer a team] have to build & develop engines for them & other teams to use. What about teams closely linked....eg Red Bull & Torro Rosso...similar creative accounting can be done here. The natural process...survival of the fittest...should apply and if they can't afford to be in F1, they shouldn't be there.

Max speaking about the idea here: http://www.autosport...t.php/id/115425

 

The lower your budget the more freedoms you would have which would result in a £50m team being close behind a £500m team. It's an interesting idea that I could see would benefit the lower teams and the sport as a whole. His ultimate solution is the f1 rights income being evenly split amongst the teams to pay their expenses for the season. Anything on top such as sponsorship income they get to keep as profit.

So why didn't he arrange that while he was FIA president instead of flogging off the rights to his mate for a pittance?

And the same time, many are horrible naive at how impossible it is to do a budget cap in a r&d environment... Cap would only work if drivers salaries were the only cost! Which it isn't...teams like Ferrari McLaren Williams etc all have non f1 projects that generate income and those sub companies could easy be setup and funded by non f1 revenue but do a significant amount of r&d for the F1 counterpart. Bang... Loophole that is unpluggable.. Budget cap in sports like hockey, basketball etc work simply because a players salaries as a function of a teams budget is controllable.. But in a non spec series like f1..... All this stupidity of a budget cap is ludicrous.. Teams would setup many off shore companies away from eyes of the fia.. He'll.. Ferrari and Mercedes Honda etc. could so easily hide resources within their road car companies and multitude of divisions the fia would be impossible to police as those companies could be legit in developing tech for road car using F1 like innovations Yadda Yadda..

And the same time, many are horrible naive at how impossible it is to do a budget cap in a r&d environment... Cap would only work if drivers salaries were the only cost! Which it isn't...teams like Ferrari McLaren Williams etc all have non f1 projects that generate income and those sub companies could easy be setup and funded by non f1 revenue but do a significant amount of r&d for the F1 counterpart. Bang... Loophole that is unpluggable.. Budget cap in sports like hockey, basketball etc work simply because a players salaries as a function of a teams budget is controllable.. But in a non spec series like f1..... All this stupidity of a budget cap is ludicrous.. Teams would setup many off shore companies away from eyes of the fia.. He'll.. Ferrari and Mercedes Honda etc. could so easily hide resources within their road car companies and multitude of divisions the fia would be impossible to police as those companies could be legit in developing tech for road car using F1 like innovations Yadda Yadda..

  Excellent post Paco.  I've pointed this out many times, but not nearly was well stated as your post.

  I've yet to see anyone be able to refute this.

I quote myself from another thread:

 

Budget caps can not work, it is impossible. Only thing a budget cap would do is to reduce the transparency. There are no moral rules that applies to corporations.

I am very surprised each time this weird, impossible suggestion are brought up

I really can't think of any major sports franchise that has a budget cap which actually works. 

 

It's like telling someone you can't earn 'x' amount because the others get 'y' less than you. 

This is a typical political/bureaucratic/control mindset approach which would surely end up increasing spend rather than cutting it back.

You'd have manufacturers leaving :-)

Says who?

So why didn't he arrange that while he was FIA president instead of flogging off the rights to his mate for a pittance?

He tried to arrange it but his private life in sex dungeons made it impossible for him to push it through.

He tried to arrange it but his private life in sex dungeons made it impossible for him to push it through.

  Also, I thinlk people may not understand that the FIA does not control the majority of funds in F1.

So why didn't he arrange that while he was FIA president instead of flogging off the rights to his mate for a pittance?

He was in the process to push it through and had also support from some of the smaller teams. 

Then, as a random surprise from nowhere, he was exposed by NoTW in a private sex scandal with prostitutes and alleged Nazi themes and his power was all of a sudden heavily compromised, his position very weak and he was politically unable to push through it. 

The manufacturers threatened a break away series but presented an ultimatum in having Max Mosley leave and so that was that. 

Of course this is a heavily summarized and readers digest version of the actual events - there was some more stuff going on but when it all boiled down we ended up somewhere around here. 

Now I'm not saying .... 

Edited by LuckyStrike1, 18 August 2014 - 18:35.

I am overwhelmingly in favour of budget caps. Tell 'em all that, minus wages, they aren't allowed to spend any more than £50m a year designing and building racing cars. And give them all enough prize money to make that possible. Would it really be any harder to police than the Financial Fair Play rules recently introduced by UEFA, or the wage budget cap that has been in effect for some years in British rugby league? Far from deterring manufacturers, the news that they can win an F1 world championship without spending hundreds of millions ought to be attractive to everybody.

He was in the process to push it through and had also support from some of the smaller teams. 

 

Then, as a random surprise from nowhere, he was exposed by NoTW in a private sex scandal with prostitutes and alleged Nazi themes and his power was all of a sudden heavily compromised, his position very weak and he was politically unable to push through it. 

 

The manufacturers threatened a break away series but presented an ultimatum in having Max Mosley leave and so that was that. 

 

Of course this is a heavily summarized and readers digest version of the actual events - there was some more stuff going on but when it all boiled down we ended up somewhere around here. 

 

Now I'm not saying .... 

There was no sex scandal in 1998. Had he shared the revenue back when the FIA had full control of it then the financial crisis in F1 would never have been so bad.

It's a fair point but were News of the World hacking voicemails in 1998?

@Spillage (sorry can't get the quote thingy to work).

So Ferrari have a new Lemans project going on.  They put all their resources into it, including spending $10M on developing a new diffuser.

One day an engineer from the Lemans project is having lunch and one of the F1 engineers sits down beside him

2 weeks later, Ferrari has a brand new diffuser on their F1 car.

How in the world would you police that?

I thought I'd never say this but I agree completely with Max Mosley in todays Autosport. Let the teams get equal amounts of money from the commerial rights, put in a budget cap as the sport is imploding and it can be controlled - and free up the rules a bit - but standardize expensive stuff that noone cares about like suspension, brakes and front and rear wings.

There was no sex scandal in 1998. Had he shared the revenue back when the FIA had full control of it then the financial crisis in F1 would never have been so bad.

Who said anything about 1998? 

Actually quite simple,, sort of. Race far simpler cars with basic safety rules. Ban exotic materials, ban a lot of the electronics. No forced aspiration and less emphasis on longevity of parts, Though there is still a case for some of that. That and petrol engines of X capacity [3.5 litre?] With say 12000 rpm max. No more than 6 speeds, no drivers aids which can be controlled with control ECUs. mechanical suspensions. And no stupid boring hybrids!! They cost tens of millions and make the racing less.

More emphasis on the drivers and less on electric gizmos,, and cars with simple aero, not the mad boffins nightmare we currently have. Wings with no more than 2 elements either end. flat bottoms and mininum ride heights. No control tyres, maximum rim widths and diameters and mininum duro on the tyres. Read moderatly hard, like the hard tyres are now.No super softs that last 5 laps and just turn the track to marbles.

That should make simpler, more entertaining racing, and a smaller budget team that is half smart may well find themselves on podiums. Even if they do not it has not cost them the National debt of a small country to do so!

Actually quite simple,, sort of. Race far simpler cars with basic safety rules. Ban exotic materials, ban a lot of the electronics. No forced aspiration and less emphasis on longevity of parts, Though there is still a case for some of that. That and petrol engines of X capacity [3.5 litre?] With say 12000 rpm max. No more than 6 speeds, no drivers aids which can be controlled with control ECUs. mechanical suspensions. And no stupid boring hybrids!! They cost tens of millions and make the racing less.
More emphasis on the drivers and less on electric gizmos,, and cars with simple aero, not the mad boffins nightmare we currently have. Wings with no more than 2 elements either end. flat bottoms and mininum ride heights. No control tyres, maximum rim widths and diameters and mininum duro on the tyres. Read moderatly hard, like the hard tyres are now.No super softs that last 5 laps and just turn the track to marbles.
That should make simpler, more entertaining racing, and a smaller budget team that is half smart may well find themselves on podiums. Even if they do not it has not cost them the National debt of a small country to do so!

Edited by Paco, 19 August 2014 - 13:46.

Who said anything about 1998? 

I did, though I got the wrong year. If Mosley wanted to evenly distribute the money earned from F1, then he had the opportunity to do so before he sold the long term rights to Ecclestone at the turn of the century. He may have tried to fix the problem in his last years of office, but it was solely down to him that the money went to Bernie in the first place.

I did, though I got the wrong year. If Mosley wanted to evenly distribute the money earned from F1, then he had the opportunity to do so before he sold the long term rights to Ecclestone at the turn of the century. He may have tried to fix the problem in his last years of office, but it was solely down to him that the money went to Bernie in the first place.

I don't believe he had the political power in 1998 to enforce his ideas and proposals about budget cap. In the late 2000's I believe he was in a much stronger political position in the sport and within the FIA to be able to make it reality and then a set of circumstances forced him out of F1 and FIA.... 

lower wider cars with wider tyres to handle the torque of the new engines... not really that high tech

Since the turbo was implemented the last time  years ago. Tech has gotten better and safety. improved.. 

Plus such cars look better   

I really like the idea, however I think it would be hard to police manufacturers not to put some research outside it's F1 budget and implement it anyway. 

As there's no budget cap, costs have been tried to cut by some technical restrictions. I've never really liked the longlife engines and gearboxes, and even less the engine homologation for multiple years.

 

But would it work if a budget cap were introduced and restrictions removed? If there were a budget cap, I think there'd be no need for restrictions aimed for cost saving. For sure, there wouldn't be a return to the days of qualy engines but there'd be more freedom for engineers, yet they should work within a restricted budget.

 

I'd prefer F1 with less restrictions, a bigger engineering challenge.

I don't think a "budget" cap would work, but a maximum sale price might. 

I think the engine Power Unit rules could be very simple.

1) Limit fuel per race to 30kg/100km.

2) Power Units must be made available to all teams for 5M Euro per car per year. 

3) All power units will be sealed and delivered to the FIA, which will distribute them randomly to the teams.

4) Teams must return Power Unit to FIA at the end of the race weekend with the seal in tact.

Again (again) they're not interested in controlling costs, they need to keep upstart teams from upsetting the status quo apple cart.

Otherwise, F1 would already be manageable. 

I claim the only reason the rules change is to make it more expensive all over again.  Towards the end of the V10 era we had the aero war, but developmental costs were yielding diminishing returns.  It's a lack of *refinement* in the series that makes it hyper expensive.  Routinely changing the formula ensures the Guy With the Deepest Pockets Wins.  Always.  It's why the formula is so frakked up, a screwball hybrid engine and goofy aero regs. 

Otherwise you'd have Cosworth, Audi, Toyota, Honda, Yamaha, Honda making customer power plants, Dallara, who knows, making chassis.  The simple fact that the regs are so convoluted (when it's not necessary) demonstrates they intentionally don't want it to be cheap.

I don't think a "budget" cap would work, but a maximum sale price might. 

 

I think the engine Power Unit rules could be very simple.

 

1) Limit fuel per race to 30kg/100km.

2) Power Units must be made available to all teams for 5M Euro per car per year. 

3) All power units will be sealed and delivered to the FIA, which will distribute them randomly to the teams.

4) Teams must return Power Unit to FIA at the end of the race weekend with the seal in tact.

That would be Gp1 you are thinking off and not FORMULA 1.

 

All teams except Mercedes agreed to raise the minimum weight from 691kg to 710kg.   Mercedes.

 

http://www.autobild....ch-5271272.html

 

Why the thumbs down? I rather have the limit at 610 then 710 to be frank.

I don't think a "budget" cap would work, but a maximum sale price might.

I think the engine Power Unit rules could be very simple.

1) Limit fuel per race to 30kg/100km.
2) Power Units must be made available to all teams for 5M Euro per car per year.
3) All power units will be sealed and delivered to the FIA, which will distribute them randomly to the teams.
4) Teams must return Power Unit to FIA at the end of the race weekend with the seal in tact.

That would be Gp1 you are thinking off and not FORMULA 1.

Edited by Paco, 22 August 2014 - 13:09.

That would be Gp1 you are thinking off and not FORMULA 1.

In what possible way? That seems to be a good way to allow engine development mid-season, and possibly allowing greater design freedom, while keeping the considerable costs of the power units down. If they cannot work out a budget cap, then an engine cost cap is a great alternative.

In what possible way? That seems to be a good way to allow engine development mid-season, and possibly allowing greater design freedom, while keeping the considerable costs of the power units down. If they cannot work out a budget cap, then an engine cost cap is a great alternative.

So you're to build a powerful engine according to tight regulations and then be capped/told what you can sell it for?

Nuts.

The regulations could be loosened considerably if there was a price limit on the engines. You can still spend as much as you want on the engine, but there is a limit on how much of the cost can be passed onto the customer teams. It's hardly an alien concept.

Mosley making even less sense now that he is gone. The only good thing he did was bring safety to the fore.

Having a budget cap which is equal to the equal split of money. How is it a competition if the man in last place gets just as much as the winner. What incentive does he have to improve other than milking the sponsors dry while at the same time making a killing on pay drivers.

Formula 1 has lost its way a long time ago but this is just crazy.

I don't think anyone proposed for the prize money to be the same.

There is the base FOM competition money that teams receive. The prize money is on top of that based on WCC standing.

To give you an idea, in terms of base FOM competition money, Ferrari receives 100 million, RedBull 70 million and Mercedes 12 million a year (as revealed by Mr Zetsche).

The base FOM money must be the same for all in my opinion.

Edited by Timstr11, 22 August 2014 - 20:56.