As Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel prepare to rejoin their battle for the Formula One world championship in Malaysia, their real competition at the front has been the most welcome feature of a revamped formula. Yet it remains a two-horse race, when what would be glorious to see is a truly competitive, multiple-team fight. It need not be a pipe dream.
How encouraging this week to observe some consensus and optimism about the need to address the spending arms race that has spiralled out of control and resulted in a two-tier grid. Talk of a level playing field has been bandied about before in F1, but there are now genuine signs that in the background the heavy roller is being deployed.
Periods of dominance are nothing new in the sport, indeed they have defined entire eras of racing, but the gap between Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull and the midfield has become a chasm. Efforts at cost cutting have effectively come to nought and the numbers reflect it.
Figures from a 2016 Autosport study of budgets are breathtaking. Ferrari’s was put at £330m; Mercedes at £265m and Red Bull at £215m. Force India came fourth in the constructors’ championship on just £90m.
Williams, who know all too well about dominating, with nine constructors titles in the 80s and 90s, were estimated to be on a budget of £105m. The team announced this week that they had made a pre-tax profit of £10.1m over the first six months of this year. A substantial part of which is believed to be based on the payment the team received from Mercedes to allow Valtteri Bottas to join them but Williams would not confirm it. Regardless of which it is not a sum that is going to give the frontrunners sleepless nights.
The numbers are, after all, what matters. Talent and hard work alone are not enough to bridge the differential. Once the basic cost of a car has been met, those extra hundreds of millions are used to refine every aspect of it. Every part receives increased research and development and those with more money are able to pursue potential avenues of advantage beyond the means of the smaller outfits.
The Williams group chief executive, Mike O’Driscoll, who calls financing F1 for an independent a “highwire act” put it succinctly. “The cost pressures are largely driven by the corporately owned teams spending substantially more,” he said on Wednesday. “That leads to an unbalanced playing field when it comes to resources and capability.”
Interestingly, his view was also echoed this week by the McLaren executive director, Zak Brown, who is in charge of a team that boasted a budget of £185m in 2016. “I think those that can afford to raise the budget levels they are at will do everything they can to maintain that,” he said. “That gives them a competitive advantage, but it is a bit like having two extra players on the field in a football match.”
McLaren are, in every sense except recent results, one of the big teams, so that Brown and O’Driscoll share such similar views is instructive of the way the wind is blowing. O’Driscoll is emphatic on the action that needs to be taken: “I don’t believe we can bridge that gap without action at an industry level,” he said. “We need fairer revenue distribution amongst the teams and we need cost controls. There is no doubt that if we have that we will see more exciting and closer racing throughout the grid.”
Brown concurred. “Speaking for McLaren, we’re a fan of budget caps,” he added. “Most other sports have it and it will equal the playing field.”
Any agreement on revenue distribution will have to wait until the new concorde agreement, which is set to be renegotiated for 2021 and while their stance might be expected from teams in the midfield, crucially both appear ready to go even further to try and make that deal a genuinely new start for F1.
McLaren are understood to receive an annual constructors championship payment of £35m (as do Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari) and Williams a heritage bonus of £10m. Voluntarily losing these has always appeared to be a sticking point in an equitable redistribution of revenue but perhaps not any more.
“We recognise we’re one of the four teams that get special payments,” said Brown. “That might mean some compromise but we feel if the sport is healthier ultimately that will benefit all of us.”
O’Driscoll would not comment on payments from the Formula One Group but when asked about it appeared open to the idea of compromise for the greater good. “If Formula One arrived at a model where they distributed revenue equally to all teams, we would be very satisfied with that result,” he said.
Both expressed optimism that change was coming, with O’Driscoll in particular impressed by the sport’s new owners and their ability to bring about long-needed change. Indeed Chase Carey, the chief executive of the Formula One group, has noted that the disparity in spending “undermines the competitive balance of the sport”.
Addressing and solving it will be no mean feat but if successful it could guarantee not only better competition but the very future of the sport. As Paddy Lowe, the William’s technical officer notes of the independents: “We are here fair weather or foul. Teams that are fundamentally backed by corporate structures are always at the whim of what that business wants. You wont find that with the independents – that’s their life, they are in there for ever.”
