Von Spanky: F1 must slash costs or teams will quit

Will Formula 1, a sport which burns money as if there was no tomorrow, survive the current global financial crisis unscathed? Not unless there are radical cost-cutting measures implemented by 2010, according to FIA boss Max Mosley.

In an interview with the Beeb, Mosley claimed that in its current form, F1 is “unsustainable”. He also predicted that several teams could quit the sport, due to prohibitive running costs:

“At the moment we’ve got 20 cars. If we lost two teams, we’d have 16. (If we lost) three teams (we’d have) 14. It then would cease to be a credible grid.”

The big boys - Ferrari, McLaren, BMW, Honda - can afford to continue regardless, and will outspend their rivals if it translates to success, but smaller, independent teams like Force India and Red Bull could be scared off by the huge cost of running an F1 team these days.

To be fair to Max, this isn’t some knee-jerk reaction to the ubiquitous credit crunch. He has been banging the same drum for at least a year, and will use all of the FIA’s powers to cut costs if the teams don’t self-regulate.

One area where the teams could save money is on engine and gearbox. Some teams blow a mind-boggling €30m a year on the drive-train alone, and Mosley believes “that could be done for probably five percent of that cost without the person in the grandstand noticing any difference at all”.

Thing is, unlike most sports, F1 is utterly defined by technological progress, and although it is very strictly regulated, teams enjoy the freedom to innovate and invent. If Mosley gets his way, teams will be more constrained and equalised than ever - that will hit the likes of McLaren and Ferrari just as hard as the smaller teams.

Max is right though: F1’s spending levels are obscene and unsustainable, but it won’t be easy to get all of the teams to think laterally at the same time - even if it does save them millions.

What do you think? Vote below, or leave a comment.