The introduction of a cost cap would be the best all-around solution to Formula 1’s financial issues, claims Williams technical director Paddy Lowe.
The topic of expenditure, whether it be engines for customer teams or the development of the car during a season, has been thrust back firmly into the spotlight since Liberty Media became the new majority shareholders earlier this year.
The idea of a cost cap is also nothing new, with a planned $40 million cap from 2010 proposed eventually scrapped, much to the detriment of the three teams that entered F1 that year, but a new effort is set to be undertaken, something Lowe agrees with.
“I prefer a cost cap or some sort of cost constraint. A constraint on the input side,” the former Mercedes team boss said.
However, he does admit other measures introduced in recent years have had some success.
“I think we had done a lot of experiments over the last 10 or 15 years by trying to control the output side,” Lowe claimed.
“They haven’t been entirely worthless those manoeuvres, for instance, the elimination of routine track testing has allowed us to not need whole test teams and cars to support those and people to sort those. That has been effective.
“The control of aerodynamic testing, restricting the number of wind tunnels you can use, that’s all been good.”A key part
Last weekend, the managing director of motorsport for the Formula One Group, Ross Brawn, made it clear any regulation on costs would not be allowed to change the fundamental principles that F1 has built up during its history.
But maintaining that, in Lowe’s opinion, is easier said than done.
“I think the problem with continuing down that road is that if you really want to reduce the leverage of your spend, in terms of lap time, significantly you end up having to make the cars too similar,” he said.
“You end up with a lot of standardisation and effectively dumb down the cars themselves and the innovation with the cars and to be effective it would be too detrimental to the product that we all enjoy as spectators.
“So I think the only real way to solve it is to control the spending at the input end of things, for which one of the solutions would be a cost cap.”