Written by:
SPEED Staff / GMM
Only billionaires can afford to keep fielding independents like Force India, Mosley notes. (LAT photo)
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Formula 1 might not survive much beyond one more season if teams do not drastically slash costs, FIA president Max Mosley has warned.
On the same day that the World Motor Sport Council gave him the authority to enter talks with the teams’ FOTA alliance about “radical” cost cutting measures, Mosley said the futures of up to three teams could be in doubt. In interview with BBC Sport, he insisted that the problem existed long before the current global financial crisis.
“It really is a very serious situation. If we can’t get this done for 2010, we will be in serious difficulty,” Mosley said.
He said the loss of two or three teams would mean F1 no longer has a “credible grid.”
“We can survive through 2009, but I’m not too sure about after,” Mosley said.
He said small teams like Toro Rosso and Force India are being “subsidized” only by billionaires like Dietrich Mateschitz and Vijay Mallya.
“It depends at the moment on millionaires – billionaires, we don’t have millionaires now. Without them, those teams wouldn’t be there,” he added, suggesting that not only the small teams are in trouble. “You cannot run a business when the outgoings are two to three times more than what’s coming in.
“Some of the manufacturers are already having difficulty if you look at their share prices,” he added.
It is clear that Mosley is targeting the standardization of engines and gearboxes, which he admits would be “draconian” but necessary, as a way to cut millions out of annual budgets.
