Flavio Briatore proposes radical idea to help smaller teams in F1

Flavio Briatore believes Formula 1 must strengthen its cost cap to give smaller teams a greater chance of competing with the championship's established giants.

The Alpine executive advisor has argued that the current financial regulations do not go far enough, pointing specifically to areas of expenditure which remain outside the cap.

F1 introduced its first cost cap in 2021, initially setting the limit at $145 million after the figure was reduced from the originally planned $175m in response to the financial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The objective was clear: prevent the wealthiest teams from simply outspending their rivals while making the championship more financially sustainable and competitive.

The regulations have largely achieved their first objective, with teams now required to operate within a defined spending limit and subject to FIA financial audits.

However, the cap has never covered every area of a team's expenditure.

Driver salaries, for example, remain excluded, as do the salaries of a team's three highest-paid personnel and a number of other costs. That creates a significant difference between the headline figure and the actual resources available to the biggest teams.

Max Verstappen is estimated to earn around $70 million per season from Red Bull, while Lewis Hamilton's Ferrari package has been reported at approximately $60m. Those figures alone would account for a substantial proportion of the current cost limit if driver salaries were included.

There is also an argument that the budget cap has, to an extent, preserved advantages that existed before its introduction.

Teams with established facilities, infrastructure, personnel and intellectual property entered the capped era with years of investment already behind them, making it more difficult for smaller operations to close the performance gap.

The new regulations have also increased the team cost cap to $215m, reflecting the additional costs associated with F1's sweeping technical reset.

Briatore, who has been involved in F1 since the 1980s, believes further action is required.

"We have a budget gap, but we need to do something stronger," he told select media, including RacingNews365, during an interview over the Hungarian Grand Prix weekend.

"Because whilst the budget cap was a very good idea, at a certain point we need to make the budget cap much stronger, and we need to include the drivers.

"We need to include a lot of stuff that is outside the budget cap at the moment to give the smaller teams the possibility to compete."

The Italian businessman knows what is required to build a championship-winning operation, having overseen Benetton's rise to the front of the grid with Michael Schumacher in the 1990s and later guided Renault to consecutive constructors' and drivers' titles in 2005 and 2006 with Fernando Alonso.

His proposal would therefore represent a significant expansion of the financial regulations, but Briatore's central argument is straightforward: if F1 wants the budget cap to genuinely level the playing field, it must account for more of the money teams are actually able to spend.