28/01/2017
NEWS STORY
As Manor goes under, Ross Brawn reiterates Liberty's desire for a budget cap, even though he's not sure how it can be done.
While some will point to Manor's failure as poor business, the fact is that the Banbury-based outfit was one of three enticed to enter the sport in 2010 by the promise of a budget cap that would not only make F1 (cough) affordable but would go some way to levelling the playing field.
Having been rescued at the death by Ovo Energy boss Stephen Fitzpatrick at the beginning of 2015, despite having essentially being given the last rites along with Caterham in late 2014, the little team that could soldiered on. Indeed, for several months it looked as though the perennial minnows might claim tenth in the standings and thereby receive a significant slice of the 2016 prize fund.
Alas, on a soggy Sunday afternoon at Interlagos, Sauber's Felipe Nasr ended that particular dream.
And so, unless there is another miracle which again sees the Banbury team rise 'phoenix-like' from the flames, Manor becomes the third and last of the (new) class of 2010 to fall by the wayside.
While most see the obvious merits of a budget cap, the haves are very much against it, indeed Ferrari and Red Bull both threatened to leave the sport when the FIA last tried to enforce one. Subsequently the Resource Restriction Agreement (RRA), a sort of gentleman's agreement by which costs could be controlled, was introduced but this too was quickly dropped.
Even before it had completed its purchases of F1, Liberty Media was stressing the need to control costs, arguing that not only was the current spending 'arms race' stifling competition, it was creating a situation whereby more teams would go the way of HRT, Caterham and now Manor.
Newly installed as boss of the technical side of the F1 company, Ross Brawn, who understands the budget capping saga from the other side of the fence, is aware that something must be done, even if he's not entirely sure how it can be achieved.
"The situation at the moment is that the return on investment, in terms of performance, is still steep, so the more money you invest the faster you go," he told ESPN.
"As long as you get a competent team like Mercedes doing it then that is what happens," he continued. "What we really need to do is reduce that slope and find ways within the technical regulations of rewarding less for heavy investment.
"That's the concept, achieving it is more difficult," he admitted.
"The idea is to have a process going on all the time of chipping away and getting back to where we want to be, there won't be one solution where we can say 'if we do that we can halve the slope'. But every decision that's made, we have to take that into account; are we giving more scope for heavy investment to go further or are we reducing it? We just need to keep thinking about it and making sure that all the discussions that happen are going in the right direction to pull the slope down.
"Budget caps have been discussed," he continued, "people say that they don't work, but they have never actually been tried. There was a voluntary budget cap or resource restriction that didn't work because not everyone volunteered to it in reality. So that is never going to work if you have got some of the teams doing it and some of the teams not.
"I would still like to have a discussion about budget caps and control, and see where people stand on that and if we feel it could be a solution. That, for sure, would then bring a limitation to what people can do. But maybe it's nirvana; maybe that is something that can't be achieved because of the range of teams in different countries and different considerations.
"I'm not saying that we have to have a budget cap, but I think we should certainly discuss it because that does address many issues. You've got all the nuances to it, because do the drivers come into the budget cap or not and so on and so forth. But a huge amount of debate went on a few years ago and I think that could be picked up again to just see if that is a solution that could work."
At a time Force India and Sauber have taken their concerns to the European Commission in terms of the way the prize money is shared, Brawn admitted that this is an area Liberty is looking at but admits that it is unlikely anything can be done until the current commercial agreement expires in 2020.
"Of course, we've got the issue of the distribution of funds to the teams, which we can't do anything about now because we have got contracts with the teams and there is no proposal to change that, but they are coming up for renewal in 2020 and we need to look at that and see if there is a better way for Formula One overall to distribute the funds.
"My personal view is that a healthy Formula One is where there is a good stock of teams that can stand on their own two feet, not be manufacturer teams, not be funded because there is a different set of objectives, but the Williams, to some degree McLarens, Force Indias and Saubers, those teams can stand on their own two feet in a respectable way and put up a decent job.
"If those teams spend far more money than they have and go bust then we can't stop that, but you want to get them over the breadline so at least if they do a sensible job with good management then they are going to have a good business and the businesses are going to be attractive and we are going to get new teams in."
All of which comes too late for Manor and its 200+ employees.