Formula 1’s biggest teams may look at other projects to redeploy staff as a way of avoiding job cuts, such as those at McLaren.
Last week, the wider McLaren Group announced 1,200 employees would go due to the financial impact of coronavirus as well as F1’s new budget cap, with 70 staff expected to be axed.
“These are very tough times for everyone,” McLaren team boss Andreas Seidl commented last week.
“There have been months of hard work under difficult circumstances but it’s great to see how, under the leadership of the FIA and F1, all teams pulled together to define the right actions to navigate through this crisis and work towards the future for a sustainable sport, that will enable all the teams to take part on a level playing field.
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“It has been clear to everyone for some time that a budget cap would be applied and we pushed for a lower limit to support a financially sustainable sport. It is a big challenge ahead of us.
“Adjusting the way we work and right-sizing the team to this new cap over the next months is a massive and painful task and, highlighted by our news earlier this week, will sadly mean losing team members, but our aim is to be the best-sized and most efficient team in the future.
“The cooperation and understanding of our team members have been great and with shutdown coming to an end, it is important the team had clarity on the various regulations, which will now allow us to start work again on our cars and understand the implications of the regulations for the future.”
The cuts at McLaren though may be nothing compared to what Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari would have to do to meet the new $145m spending limit.
But whereas the Woking-based outfit had to reduce staff numbers across all parts of the business, Ferrari has already hinted at new projects in WEC or IndyCar, while Mercedes and Red Bull may look to increasing capacity in other divisions.
“Unfortunately, the reality of these regulations for the top three teams is that it will affect the headcount as the teams have to reshape themselves,” Christian Horner told The Race.
“We have an evolving and emerging advanced technology business, obviously we’ve been designing and producing the Valkyrie in the last few years, and further projects being placed with advanced tech which is good to see.
“Our biggest asset is our people and we will look to protect as many as we can within the organisation,” he added.
“Inevitably there will be some pain with these draconian levels that have been bought in, but F1 and particularly Red Bull has always been very adaptive to whatever the regulations are.”
