14/07/2020
NEWS STORY
One of the biggest anomalies of the budget cap due to be introduced next year is the number of items excluded from the cap.
Staff who work on the design, development and manufacture of the engines are excluded from the cap as are marketing staff, senior management and driver salaries.
However, a number of team bosses believe that as "performance differentiators", drivers should be included in the $145m cap.
"I'm definitely in favour of including the driver salaries within the cap because it forces teams to make those decisions," says Racing Point's, Otmar Szafnauer.
"Do you spend your money on a driver or do you take one that doesn't cost you so much and spend it elsewhere on performance," he added, somewhat ironic when one considers that one of his drivers is the team owner's son. "I'm in favour of having the salaries within the budget cap."
Asked if such a move might cause superstar drivers to look elsewhere, he replied: "I believe that even having the driver salaries within the cap their salaries would still be higher than what they would get at other racing series."
"Drivers are performance differentiators," said Claire Williams, "and in order to get a much more equitable playing field in this sport, as the financial regulations are there to do, then I think it's absolutely critical that anyone who is performance related should be part of that cost cap. I wholeheartedly agree with it.
"I think that the likelihood of drivers being discouraged from participating in our sport would probably be minimal," she added, "simply because this is the highest echelon of motorsport and it's a destination where drivers want to be racing."
"I have nothing against a driver cap or a driver salary cap, whatever you want to call it," said Guenther Steiner. "I don't see a problem for us in it because we are so far off it, whatever it will be. So, I'm not pushing it or anything but I think at some stage it will be a good idea to put it in the budget cap, because it's a performance differentiator.
"For sure, if you spend a lot of money on a driver then you cannot do other things," he continued. "That should level the playing field even more and I think the salaries would adjust by themselves and they would end up lower than they are now.
"I'm not faced with the problem, to be high in salaries because we are not even at the budget cap, so in the end, any of these proposals, I will be OK with it, so long as the amount is within some reason.
"The only point is that it would be a bit strange to exclude the highest salary of the team and not to include the drivers," said Frederic Vasseur. "If we are taking this direction we have to include everybody into the cost cap.