Alpine Formula 1 team principal Otmar Szafnauer has warned teams could exploit a “loophole” to carry out development work outside the sport’s budget cap.
Szafnauer did not accuse any rival outfits of breaching the cap, which was introduced two years ago. However he warned teams could potentially benefit from development work done outside of the cap.
The budget cap was introduced in 2021 and teams were judged on their compliance with it for the first time last year. They are required to submit reports on their spending during 2022 by the end of this month.
Last year F1 teams took months to agree a deal to increase the cap in response to rising inflation. Alpine was one of the teams which opposed those changes, and Szafnauer believes the differences in how teams are structured has the potential to seriously undermine the intention behind the cap, which was to prevent some teams out-spending their rivals.
“All those inflation bonus things, although we vetoed them, I think those are marginally adding to the cap, not massively,” he told media including RaceFans. “But when you look at corporate structures, that is massive.
“If you only have 68, 70 people in the racing team and the rest of the 900 are outside of it and apportioning costs, that’s the kind of stuff we have to worry about.”
Some teams have dedicated technology divisions where they apply developments from their F1 programme to other industries. Szafnauer is concerned about how any transfer of knowledge back from those divisions to an F1 operation is treated within the cap.
“If you have a great F1 idea because you’re working on something else, how do you account for the stuff that you thought of when you were working on something else? That’s just an idea.
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“But if you take that even further, it could be other things. Developing tools, for example, for a boat, but that tool then applies to F1 and you’ve spent loads of investment on developing the tool and then you largely account for it in F1.
“That’s the kind of stuff we have to start thinking about to stop. And that’s much bigger than just the inflationary stuff.”
Top technical staff from some teams have been relocated to divisions which are separate from their F1 programmes.
“It seems like more and more people or teams are looking at their well-remunerated employees that way, again for cost cap reasons,” said…
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