Raising F1 budget cap would ‘tilt playing field’, claims Alpine team chief

The efforts of Formula One’s biggest teams to raise the sport’s budget cap are an attempt to claw back an unfair advantage and indicative of poor planning, according to the Alpine team principal, Otmar Szafnauer.

With the cap intended to level the playing field, Szafnauer insists teams are using claims of inflationary pressure as a smokescreen to spend more looking for performance and said that he and others will attempt to prevent any regulation change.

F1 introduced a budget cap for the first time in 2021. It was set at $145m and this year dropped to $140m. It is due to further decrease to £135m next year. The measure was seen as vital to control ever spiralling costs and to close the performance differential between the big three, Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull, and the rest of the field.

The process was difficult for the major teams, who had to let staff go and adapt to operating without an ability to merely throw money at problems. It was welcomed by the midfield teams who in most cases were already spending below the cap. This season, however, there has been a vociferous call to raise the cap again to $147m, which Szafnauer maintains is actually evidence the system is working.

“If it wasn’t going in the right direction the big teams now wouldn’t be crying to increase it,” he said. “It’s ironic that once the season is underway and the relative performances of the cars are known, people want to increase the budget cap.”

The argument being made in favour of increasing spending is that global inflationary pressure has increased costs in areas such as logistics and freight. Szafnauer insists that potential inflation issues were well known in December when budgets are decided. He contends that they would have planned for