McLaren is against the introduction of a cost cap in Formula 1, claiming it is unnecessary and it cannot be policed. Ahead of talks between teams over the next few months to try to finalise budget limits for 2015, McLaren Group CEO Ron Dennis has hit out at the idea. He thinks that it will be impossible for proper auditing of accounts of the big manufacturers to be conducted, and also reckons that teams should be left to adjust their spending according to their needs. “The issue is not the concept of a cost cap – the issue is that the regulatory process of monitoring a cost cap is almost impossible,” said Dennis, who has returned to a role of influence at his team this year. “It creates even more scrutinising of a car, not just in respect of its technical conformity, but also its fiscal conformity. The idea is to simplify some aspects of its design and designers are more than capable of circumventing the regulations correctly so they comply.”
Dennis says historical issues where the FIA has taken time to determine the technical legality of cars would be amplified when it came to judging if teams had overspent. “Can you imagine the complexity of a whole set of regulations that don’t have anything to do with performance compliance but more about fiscal compliance? It is the practicality of the concept if you then had some sort of audit. “Let’s presume that a company wanted to circumvent. Let’s just say it was Daihatsu or Toyota – I don’t know about you but my understanding is that it takes years to understand how to write and read in those languages. So how on Earth the FIA will go into one of those companies and do an audit on what is spent on R&D or the component suppliers? Can you imagine trying to police that? It is pie in the sky.” He added: “If you cannot afford to be in F1, don’t be in F1. There are lots of other categories that you can go motor racing in. “It has been that way from the very, very beginning. For years Ferrari dominated F1 because they had more money. Things change. Suddenly they were faced with manufacturers who had equal amount of money.”
Dennis also thinks that is illogical of the FIA to be so eager to bring in a cost cap when it was a key player in pushing through the huge expense of engine rules for 2014. “These engine regulations, for someone to turn around and say we should reduce the cost, when we had bullet proof engines the price of which was cascaded down and it was removed as being the essential ingredient of performance……. “Apart from the complexity, [it is] the most expensive engine in the history of motor sport. In the end you reap what you sow – and the same people who took us down this path, to then go down another path and say how we are going to reduce costs….. “My goodness, how contrary to logic is that?”
Source: Autosport.
