Saturday 2 May 2009

Williams wants F1 budget cap to be compulsory

Sir Frank Williams says his team will be pushing for Formula 1 to adopt a compulsory budget cap next season to avoid the creation of a two-tier world championship.The FIA World Motor Sport Council decided to introduce £40m cap for 2010 at its meeting in Paris on Wednesday.But already teams are raising concerns that the optional nature of the scheme – whereby cost-capped teams will be granted greater technical freedoms in return for accepting the spending limit – will cause problems.
Williams said in a statement issued on Thursday that he supports the budget cap solution to reducing F1 costs, but wants all teams to compete under the same set of rules.“Williams has supported the introduction of a budget cap since the idea was first put forward early in 2008,” he said.
“Since then FOTA [the Formula One Teams’ Association] has made tremendous steps forward on costs but the rationale for a budget cap has also grown even stronger.“We would like to see all the teams operating to one set of regulations and under a budget cap in 2010 and that is the position we will be advocating within FOTA when we meet next week.“We understand that this will represent a serious challenge for some of the teams but we expect that FOTA will work together to find a unified and constructive way to take the FIA’s initiative forward.”
McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh has also argued that a two-tier regulatory framework is not the “optimal solution” for F1 and has called for “measured negotiation” between the teams and the FIA to reach a better outcome.

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