Perhaps it is his desire to return to the F1 paddock, or merely that he has a book to flog, but there's no denying that Christian Horner is currently giving Guenther Steiner a run for his money as the go-to, renta-a-quote stakes for F1 wisdom.

Like James Vowles, Horner believes that, though the original intention was good, the budget cap is no longer doing what it was intended for, and the former Red Bull boss has now spoken out on a topic which, for the first time in years, is threatening a split between the teams.

Vowles is seeking a revision to the cap which would see a sliding scale that favours those at the back of the grid as opposed to the current system whereby all eleven teams have the same spending limit.

When the Briton joined Williams from Mercedes he admitted shock at the state of the Grove outfit's facilities claiming that they were twenty years out of date.

Vowles argues that while the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari already had world-class facilities, those at the back of the grid have had to spend money to improve theirs and that this, in turn, compromised what was available for the race track.

Horner agree that change is needed to a system that remains difficult for outsiders to fully comprehend, for as opposed to a blanket limit on how much teams may spend certain items are excluded from the cap, little things like driver salaries, the salaries of the top three employees and marketing... hence the 'exclusive' livery changes at almost every single race which are almost always really only for the benefit of sponsors.

"In the early years, there was a bedding into those rules," Horner tells Autosport. "The things that we got charged with in that first year now would not be an issue, or even in the second year," he adds, referring to 2021 when Red Bull was hit with a fine and a reduction in wind tunnel time for breaching the cap.

"I think they've tied up a lot of the regulations," he continues, "what I see now is that you've got a budget cap of just over $200m, but teams are spending $500 or $600m.

"More needs to be included within the cap," he insists. "I think the ($190m) cap on the engine side, arguably, as an all-encompassing cap, is a good thing, it's just, what is that level?

"Formula 1 teams will spend as much money as they have, and it's like a balloon with not enough air in it, if you squeeze it one end, the air is going to go somewhere else. You'll now see driver retainers far healthier than they were pre-budget cap.

"It's finding that right balance, and I think all of these businesses now, they're no longer liabilities. Even the smallest team on the grid has a multi-billion dollar valuation. Five, six, seven years ago, they would have been seen as liabilities. So it's driven real value into these teams, or franchises, that a team like Haas or Williams has come up the rankings."

Other than attempting to (sigh) level the playing field, the cap was intended to give stability to the teams after years of seeing outfits enter the sport only to drop out a couple of years later due to the financial inability to compete.

"Prior to that, Formula 1 was like having a bucket full of money with a hole in the bottom," says Horner, referring to the introduction of the cap. "You'd run as far as you could with it until it ran out and spend a bit more than you actually had. We saw many teams come and go as a result, and now, with a budget cap, it's driven efficiency.

"I remember pre-budget cap, the amount of unused stock that we would have at the end of the season, that had never seen a racing car, it'd be tens of millions of pounds. We'd have, because of the IP, you don't want it to go anywhere; you're not going to destroy it, and so they just sit in warehouses full of floors and wings and suspension parts, something like an Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark scenario.

"Now, with a budget cap, you don't have that luxury, so you're much more selective in what you manufacture, how you spend your money, and the usage and consumption of those parts. It's driven real efficiency into the businesses, so the accounts teams play as big a role as the design teams now in terms of winning Grands Prix.

"By the time I left, the accounting department was as big as the drawing office because the financial rules are as important as the sporting or technical rules."

Unsurprisingly, Horner's feelings about the cap put him in direct opposition to Toto Wolff who feels the cap is supressing salaries and thereby preventing teams from recruiting the very, very best from the world of engineering.

The Austrian is also vehemently opposed to the idea of the sliding scale based on performance, though, on the cusp of securing both the drivers' and team titles, he would be wouldn't he?