PitPass has an article today that explains why Ferrari are the only team not to welcome the FIA's suggestion of budget capping, rather than restriction on wind tunnels and other forms of testing. Apparently, Ferrari's earnings from F1 amounted to $100 million last year.
That is before things like sponsorship and advertising revenues are taken into account; the figure includes just the prize money for winning the Constructors' Championship and a payment agreed by FOA as a reward for committing to stay in the formula until 2012. It is no wonder that the Italian team do not like the idea of budget caps when they are raking in money at this rate.
Contrast this with the present financial struggles of Super Aguri, a team that has demonstrated its ability to compete in F1 and gained a large fan following as a result, and one has to wonder at the huge disparities of earning power in the sport. It is necessary that there should be a sliding scale of prize money from winning down to merely taking part but should the differences be so great? As for paying to extract a promise from a team to remain in the game, that seems far too close to bribery for comfort.
We tend to accept that these huge sums of money are inevitable in F1 today, excusing it with the thought that the sport has become a business and there is no turning back. Without money, the sport would soon lose its claim to be the cutting edge of technology. But it should be remembered that money is also the cause of many of the things that we dislike most in modern F1: the substitution of time-honored circuits with featureless tracks in countries that have no history of motor sport, the constant changes to the regulations in a doomed quest to bring down costs, the dominance of manufacturer teams that could leave the sport tomorrow without a backward glance, the impossibility of new teams entering and surviving in so costly a competition.
It is perhaps the most serious threat to the survival of F1 as a sport at all. Money built F1 to the high point of popularity it enjoys now and money threatens to be the reason for its changing into something no longer recognizable as motor sport. The FIA are to be commended in that they seek to find a way to preserve the sport without warping it beyond reason; it is only their suggested solutions that I take issue with, believing that there are better ways to achieve the goal.
I do not think that the budget cap idea is workable - there seems to be so many ways in which teams could cheat and fiddle the returns. But it is preferable to the suggested alternative of limiting wind tunnel and other testing. Let them try it and we shall see how effective it is, say I.
Beyond that, however, it may be time for the FIA to consider its prize-giving structure. It seems senseless to be paying the richest teams large sums of money while the little guys receive no more than token payments. All are necessary for there to be meaningful competition and the sport is the poorer for every Minardi that falls by the wayside. If the FIA were to find a way to make things just a little easier for the small teams, I would feel more convinced of their genuine care for the sport.