31 replies to this topic

[jimjimjeroo]

It was mentioned very briefly last weekend, can't remember if it was Toto or Horner but has been completely ignored.

This cost cap has cost 100s of jobs and has not been mentioned at all!

It may be great for the sport but spare a thought to these people. The last 18 months have been bad enough without that. It's not going to be great for them. Covid isn't the only killer so is mental health!

[noikeee]

This was my main fear when they announced the cost cap. Teams spending lots less cash obviously means lots less staff.

In the long term this is good for the sport as teams were just bloated and unsustainable but yeah, absolutely **** for the current generation of F1 team workers who get shafted here. The fact Covid coincided at the same time won't help.

In an ideal world, lots of staff getting redundant would mean lots of staff available for an 11th or even 12th F1 team. Sadly they've firmly shut the door there with that crazy buy-in fee to enter the sport, to protect the current franchises. My guess is some of these people might end up instead in other series that might be experiencing growth, the obvious landing spot might be the new generation of prototype WEC cars. Isn't that one of the reasons why Ferrari have finally entered the WEC's top category officially? (a good way to use up all that redundant staff)

Edited by noikeee, 15 April 2021 - 08:40.

[jimjimjeroo]

This was my main fear when they announced the cost cap. Teams spending lots less cash obviously means lots less staff.

In the long term this is good for the sport as teams were just bloated and unsustainable but yeah, absolutely **** for the current generation of F1 team workers who get shafted here. The fact Covid coincided at the same time won't help.

In an ideal world, lots of staff getting redundant would mean lots of staff available for an 11th or even 12th F1 team. Sadly they've firmly shut the door there with that crazy buy-in fee to enter the sport, to protect the current franchises. My guess is some of these people might end up instead in other series that might be experiencing growth, the obvious landing spot might be the new generation of prototype WEC cars. Isn't that one of the reasons why Ferrari have finally entered the WEC's top category officially? (a good way to use up all that redundant staff)

I had considered this, massive redundant talent pool. Back marker teams will be hovering like vultures so guess there has been some interteam movements, and the cream always rises.

[SophieB]

It was mentioned very briefly last weekend, can't remember if it was Toto or Horner but has been completely ignored.

This cost cap has cost 100s of jobs and has not been mentioned at all!

It may be great for the sport but spare a thought to these people. The last 18 months have been bad enough without that. It's not going to be great for them. Covid isn't the only killer so is mental health!

 
With respect, it has been covered:
 
https://www.autospor...st-cap/5920818/
 

"We've had to go through the pain of redundancies over the winter," Horner said.
"We've had to resize, repackage ourselves and that's really tough when you're saying goodbye to members of the team, some of which have been there for 25 years across its different formats.
"It's been a very tough exercise and continues to be a significant challenge, particularly for the bigger teams.
"It drives efficiency into the business because it quite simply has to. Head count is your biggest cost, therefore it has to be as efficient as you could possibly make it."
The pain of making staff members redundant has also heightened the top teams' sensitivities about F1's planned sprint race experiment, which will involve trials at three 2021 race weekends.
 

Amid fears that teams will incur additional costs through those additional Saturday races, several outfits are pushing for an extra financial compensation on top of the agreed budget cap.
Mercedes chief Toto Wolff, whose team has also had to let staff members go over the off-season, explained that not having a sprint race allowance could force the team to revisit its staff roster.
"We are really struggling to just come in below the budget cap" Wolff said. "And we're talking about tens of thousands of pounds and not hundreds of dollars [of sprint race costs].
"And therefore, we would really like to support [F1 chiefs] Stefano [Domenicali] and Ross [Brawn] with the idea because, as discussed before, I think it's worth a try.
"But we simply haven't got the margin to go for it and then find out that there is an extra half million pounds or more that we have to find within that budget. "Because that could mean looking at people again. And that's not where I want to go anymore at all."

 

 

[lustigson]

While this subject may or may not have been explicitly mentioned over the last few months (or even years), it has come up in articles like the ones about Ferrari looking to Le Mans and IndyCar, in order for them to keep valued staff members on board.

[jjcale]

Formula austerity?

 

Short term knee-jerk or long term right-sizing? 

 

Is this cost cutting necessary for survival ... or just a manifestation typical corporate greed?

 

I dont know .... I dont know enough to have an opinion .... but I am feeling like this is more along the lines of long term right-sizing but not for the sake of survival but more in the service of typical corporate greed.

[fed up]

Corporate greed. Until a team comes out and states that revenue has dropped and is forecasted to drop even lower in the future, this is a simple way to dumb down the technological side of F1 and head towards a spec series. Allowing teams to spend what they want creates a them and us culture and 7 years of Merc dominance. If the teams spends less while the income remains constant or increases, the sport and individual teams earn more.

 

Redundancy is not a good thing, worse still when the sports cites this as a necessary evil. Oh well, capitalism lives.

[ANF]

[loki]

This only impacts a few of the teams.  The others are nowhere near the cap.  That doesn’t lessen the pain of those that have been let go but it’s not the disaster that’s stated in this thread.  The economics of a sustainable F1 has changed and this is an effort to make the sport more sustainable for most teams.

[Izzyeviel]

It sucks for the people involved obviously, but teams don't need hundreds of aeros guys. They're paying people great money to create things that harm the sport. a lot of these jobs should never have existed in the first place. The only reason they do is teams have huge budgets to spend. 

[Rodaknee]

What do these job losses mean for the future of anyone in or thinking of going into motorsport?  Will the largest teams have to cut back on apprenticeships and training too?  There around a dozen UK universities running motorsport Engineering degrees, will they be phased out as their students discover their potential jobs have gone up in smoke.

 

It's proved far too easy for an American media company run by people who couldn't put up a shelf, making rules that will have affect skilled engineers and designers, without giving a toss.  I've not seen much of Ross Brawn during these developments, they must have been crocodile tears at Honda when he laid off hundreds in 2009.

[Fastcake]

One of the reasons McLaren and Ferrari have entered other series is to redeploy team members away from Formula One. I'm sure Red Bull and Mercedes can find positions elsewhere for some of their employees - Red Bull do have an engine programme to set up of course. It's only really the big three teams that have to make big cut backs, and I think Renault is the only other team even above the budget cap. Redundancies should hopefully be limited.

 

In an ideal world a full grid of teams spending near the cap would hire more people than the current situation, with a handful of big teams, a couple of middle ones, and five small operations. In the meanwhile, maybe a more equitable share of the revenue might allow the small teams to expand a little.

[ARTGP]

Aston Martin has been on a hiring Frenzy

[Rodaknee]

Aston Martin has been on a hiring Frenzy

Must have filled all the jobs, because they're only advertising 3 positions now.

[GreenMachine]

Organisations go on hiring freezes, and redundancies, all the time.  Having been on the receiving end of a redundancy, I have lots of sympathy for those F1 staff affected.  But that is a reality of commercial life, and anyone who didn't see this coming as soon as talk started of budget caps, was either wilfully blind, or plain stupid.

 

As has been pointed out, there are different ways of skinning this cat, not all of which involve a termination.  And even if a termination was involved, that is not necessarily the end of the world, as even a less skilled tech from one of the big spenders will have value for smaller teams with room in their budget cap.

 

Whether the budget cap, and therefore the associated pain, will be worth it remains to be seen.  But redundancies are bad enough without labelling them 'dirty'.  Painful yes, but like the dentist a necessary part of (working) life  ..

[sabjit]

I've had a few friends who are fresh out of university, had done internships or year placements at various teams but when the cost cap was announced, no new positions for grads!

 

So its not just people being made redundant, its talented engineering graduates being locked out at entry level.

[loki]

Must have filled all the jobs, because they're only advertising 3 positions now.

That assumes all positions are always posted.  That’s not true in any business.

[Rodaknee]

I've had a few friends who are fresh out of university, had done internships or year placements at various teams but when the cost cap was announced, no new positions for grads!

 

So its not just people being made redundant, its talented engineering graduates being locked out at entry level.

Student numbers of these courses will now be reduced, because who need to find themselves one of 20 chasing 1 job.  Some universities will drop the course.  Lecturers will move on and not be replaced.  Then someone will notice there are no replacement engineers joining the teams, claiming they never saw it coming.

 

One way to create a spec series.  F1 stuffed by media clowns who don't know one end of a screwdriver from the other.

[loki]

Yep, losing a few hundred jobs is not only going crater the entire motorsport industry but education as well.  Not all interns get gigs where they interned.  Not everyone who graduates gets a job in F1 let alone motorsports.

[Sparky68]

Already lost quite a few good mates due to the redundancies. 

[JustNotFastEnough]

Right-sizing was inevitable, because the spending was creating a 3 classes inside one formula. Wiser heads prevailed. Sad for the redundant staff, but a necessary evil.

[LiftAndCoast]

Already lost quite a few good mates due to the redundancies. 

Really sorry to hear that.  Have any been able to find positions with the smaller teams?

[Sparky68]

Really sorry to hear that.  Have any been able to find positions with the smaller teams?

Some have and others have found work with suppliers we use.

[Clatter]

What do these job losses mean for the future of anyone in or thinking of going into motorsport? Will the largest teams have to cut back on apprenticeships and training too? There around a dozen UK universities running motorsport Engineering degrees, will they be phased out as their students discover their potential jobs have gone up in smoke.

It's proved far too easy for an American media company run by people who couldn't put up a shelf, making rules that will have affect skilled engineers and designers, without giving a toss. I've not seen much of Ross Brawn during these developments, they must have been crocodile tears at Honda when he laid off hundreds in 2009.

F1 is not the only motorsport.

[taran]

What do these job losses mean for the future of anyone in or thinking of going into motorsport?  Will the largest teams have to cut back on apprenticeships and training too?  There around a dozen UK universities running motorsport Engineering degrees, will they be phased out as their students discover their potential jobs have gone up in smoke.

 

It's proved far too easy for an American media company run by people who couldn't put up a shelf, making rules that will have affect skilled engineers and designers, without giving a toss.  I've not seen much of Ross Brawn during these developments, they must have been crocodile tears at Honda when he laid off hundreds in 2009.

 

This seems overly dramatic. Back in the 1970s and 1980s for example, teams had between 30 and 100 people. Assuming a grid of 15 teams, that's a max of 1,500 people. Nowadays, that's a single team or at best two.

 

The lack of potential jobs didn't stop hopefuls then. It just took a fair amount of begging, lucky breaks and accepting any position in a team to get a leg in. Or finding a job in a lower tier team (F3/F2) and working your way up. Just read the biographies/books from designers etc. from the era.

 

IMO it just means that motorsport has joined the wider business world in which diplomas don't mean that much anymore because everyone has one and it takes grinding to eventually get a (dream) job.

[pacificquay]

A managed programme of redundancy like this is certainly preferable to wholesale job losses when entire teams or championships collapse due to nothing being done about costs

[sabjit]

Student numbers of these courses will now be reduced, because who need to find themselves one of 20 chasing 1 job.  Some universities will drop the course.  Lecturers will move on and not be replaced.  Then someone will notice there are no replacement engineers joining the teams, claiming they never saw it coming.

 

One way to create a spec series.  F1 stuffed by media clowns who don't know one end of a screwdriver from the other.

 

There is more to engineering than F1 so I doubt this outlook very much

[sabjit]

Yep, losing a few hundred jobs is not only going crater the entire motorsport industry but education as well.  Not all interns get gigs where they interned.  Not everyone who graduates gets a job in F1 let alone motorsports.

 

Most of the people I know that I referenced did get jobs. But thats not the point. The point is the budget cap is gonna impact fresh talent coming into sport which could have an impact down the line.

[loki]

Most of the people I know that I referenced did get jobs. But thats not the point. The point is the budget cap is gonna impact fresh talent coming into sport which could have an impact down the line.

It will have zero impact on the education market.  There are always more fresh recruits than available spaces even in the best of times.  Like other dream job gigs most of those kids will never see an F1 paddock as a team member.  Some will get jobs in other motorsports but likely most of them will get other support jobs somewhere in the automotive or race service field.

[jjcale]

Student numbers of these courses will now be reduced, because who need to find themselves one of 20 chasing 1 job.  Some universities will drop the course.  Lecturers will move on and not be replaced.  Then someone will notice there are no replacement engineers joining the teams, claiming they never saw it coming.

 

One way to create a spec series.  F1 stuffed by media clowns who don't know one end of a screwdriver from the other.

 

But this is what the fans demand ... they claim. 

 

Nobody was forcing teams to spend more than they have. Every team spent what it could - based on what it could raise.... so I dont accept the idea that without the cost cap teams would implode from over spending. Any problems would come from not matching spending with revenue. 

 

Instead of trying to raise revenue F1 has decided to cut spending... to improve the bottom line.... this may be the only realistic way to improve the bottom line in the short run - but lets not pretend that they are doing anything else. 

 

They are willing to cut jobs, and threaten the DNA of F1 (as a constructor's championship) in order to boost the bottom line of the teams..... we should be willing to call it what it is .... whether you think its a good idea or inevitable or whatever is another question.    

[ExFlagMan]

I wonder just how many of these university motorsport graduates have actually gone straight into jobs in F1 teams rather than getting real job experience in teams in the lower formula before a small minority actually get the cance of moving up. 

 

I realise that the no of jobs in the smaller teams that would have been available to graduates may now get taken by those made redundant but that is not a problem exclusive to motorsport.

[pdac]

Teams have the same amount of money - they just cannot spend it on their F1 project. If they wanted to, they can develop new projects and still employ people and still recruit graduates to work on those projects. They choose not to, because they are businesses, not charities.