New money row brewing in F1 paddock

Apr.9 (GMM) A new financial row is brewing in the Formula 1 paddock.

As previously reported, some teams are calling for an adjustment to the $140 million budget cap as raging inflation hurts the team’s limited funds.

“At the moment there are still three teams against it,” revealed Alpha Tauri’s team boss Franz Tost.

“We would be in favour of improving it a bit, because the costs – especially in terms of logistics – have risen insanely,” he told Sky Deutschland.

“We’re already way over the limit.”

Alfa Romeo team manager Beat Zehnder confirmed: “We’re paying 160 percent more for air freight than in 2020. Improvements have to be made.”

The Russia-Ukraine war in particular means air freight is steadily becoming unviable, forcing the teams to rely almost exclusively on ships.

“These ships are getting bigger and bigger,” Zehnder said.

“Today we have ships with 28,000 containers, so loading and unloading takes five days. That used to be a day and a half.”

He admits that the big teams are looking to increase their allowed annual budgets from $140 million to up to $148m.

“We could actually get by with less,” Zehnder said.