Ex-Minardi boss Paul Stoddart sees the potential for new private teams to enter Formula 1, although also sees hurdles too.
For more recent F1 fans, Minardi was one of the great underdog teams, who often raced at the back of the grid but launched the careers of several top drivers, including Fernando Alonso.
In 2005, the team was sold to Red Bull and now races as AlphaTauri, meaning the legacy of Minardi lives on, however, the time when perennial backmarker outfits could exist really ended in the last decade, when the three 2010 entries, Virgin, Team Lotus and Hispania, also collapsed within six years.
But with F1 introducing a new $145m budget cap this year, a figure that will reduce to $135m by 2023, Stoddart does see the possibility for privately-backed teams like Minardi to once again return.
“It’s certainly interesting at the moment because the budgets are being pulled back,” the European Aviation boss told RaceFans last year. “So where the budgets, to a degree, got out of control, I do feel that it is getting a bit more sensible.
“[There’s a chance that] there will be private teams coming in the near future,” the Australian suggested. “I’m not sure it will be ’22, but I think there’s a chance that F1 might become a bit more sensible and a lot depends on what they do with the engine regs in ’25 or ’26.”
The most recent entirely new team on the grid was Haas back in 2016, while Panthera Team Asia and Campos are entities who have voiced interest in joining in the coming years.
Before any new entry can join the grid, however, the new Concorde Agreement states they must pay $200m into a pot which will then be distributed to the other teams to ensure revenue payments aren’t diluted by having more teams.
As a result, Stoddart believes any potential team owner is better trying to buy a current team, citing the recent changes in ownership at Williams and Force India.
“I think there will be teams come up from time to time that can be bought for less than that $200m entry fee,” he said, citing Haas and Alfa Romeo as possibly next on the for sale list.
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“If I was somebody looking to get back in, I’d be looking at buying a team, not starting a new one, even though we have all the facilities to do it.”
As for whether that was a hint he is considering returning to the grid, Stoddart admits there was some previous interest.
“When we were there as the 11th team with the F1 two-seater I had a bit of information that things were going to go kind of the way they have gone in terms of the new deal,” he explained.
“I was thinking about it quite seriously in 2018, not quite so much in 2019 because we were going in a different direction with the company and ploughing squillions of dollars into aviation.
“But I’ve got about 90% of what I’d need. I’ve got all the facilities: I’ve got the trucks, the motorhomes and, to a certain degree, a lot of the people, we’ve still got our car build capacity.
“So for us to set up like a Haas where you contract a lot of stuff out and have a team of 100, 150 people, that wouldn’t be too difficult,” he teased.
“To be honest, I would absolutely love it. I would give it 110 percent because you have to with F1, but it’s all-consuming and so it would be much harder to run my other businesses.”
