Honda want budget caps

[Steven Roy]

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/64483

Nick Fry and Ross Brawn want F1 teams to have budget caps. 

Memory is a funny thing.  I don't remember Ross proposing or supporting this idea when he had the biggest budget in the business but now he is all in favour of it.  Suggesting it when he had a Ferrari budget would have been credible but now it just seems like Honda are unable to raise enough money to be competitive so we will change the rules.  Maybe they should sell advertising space on their cars.  Some teams have made a lot of money by doing that.

Budget capping in F1 is about as practical as recapturing all the sprayed champagne and putting it back in the bottle.  Let us use McLaren as an example because no doubt the FIA will pick on them.  Imagine McLaren want to sub-contract the manufacture of some exhaust manifolds.  They give the contract to a company who also make exhaust manifolds for their road cars.  So they take 30% off the cost of the F1 parts and add it to the road car parts.  How do you police that??

How do you decide how much of Ron Dennis's salary should be paid by the F1 company as opposed to any other company in the group?  Norbert Haug is paid by Daimler-Benz but the F1 team get the benefit of part of his time so should the cost of that proportion of his time be included in their budget?

Teams would end up spending 30% of their budget on accountants and auditors.

[Chameleon]

And lawyers...

[cosworth151]

Honda might want to look in to a new method of funding the team. It involves having companies, known as "sponsors," pay the team money to put adverts on the cars.

But then, they might have to pay a $100,000 fine for stealing Lotus's idea.

[Dare]

Couldn't you imagine a board meeting where
the idea of sponsor adverts on the car is
brought up and somone says "say we can do that"

[Scott]

What are they going on about?  For one thing, why is Brawn even getting into such a discussion when he will want to harness all of Honda's resources and more to put together a car worth putting on the grid (for a change).  For another, it's easy to say the teams should have a budget cap, but Manu teams, like Honda can simply sell 'their team' an engine for a dollar and devote thousands of CFD and tunnel hours hidden away in their Japanese factories.  Like Steven says, the subcontracting will get ridiculous if they try to cap the budgets.  I think they are just stirring the coals during the off season...

[John S]

Yeah sure sounds more like Wind and P*** from Ross than a subject to be taken seriously.

He is probably hoping to divert attention from something else, like customer cars for instance.

[raindancer]

Honda will win the WC in the next 3 years. Mark my words. Williams would be acquired by than ! Mclaren would be known as Mercedes.

[romephius]

And I will be driving for Ferrari next to Mark Webber....... somehow I don't think so.... but hey, you can dream.....

Honda are gonna get screwed up by Japan, like they always do, regardless of who they hire.

As always this is just my opinion and I could be wrong.

Rom

[Scott]

Not a chance - you're too old Rom.  Seriously Rain, Honda will be (very) lucky to win a race in the next year, and I'm with Rom on the idea that Head Office will squash any chance of the free-thinking required to lead to a WC in the next three years.  Ross will not see out two years, especially if his bosses interfere with anything other than blank cheques.