F1 | F1 and the top teams are struggling to find an economic agreement: sprint races at risk?
McLaren CEO Zak Brown revealed that some top teams have asked for a budget cap increase of 5 million dollars, and that the best solution could be to adopt this format in 2023.
The new format of the sprint qualifying, that we have already tasted the essence of, last season, seemed destined to be confirmed also in this 2022 F1 season.
Although there wasn't positive feedback, at least from what emerged by the majority of the fans online, the leaders of the Circus seemed proud of their "experiment" from the beginning, thinking it as a success after Silverstone, Monza and Interlagos.
And the fact that Formula 1 was determined to continue along this path is demonstrated by the project that would see six sprint races scheduled for this upcoming season.
However, the confirmation has not arrived yet, because there would be no agreement on extra payments to the teams for the sprint races. The initial offer would include a payment of $500,000 for the first five sprint races, plus $150,000 for each additional event.
That would be 2.65 million for the six races of 2022.
The top teams don’t seem to like his amount of money, probably because they are already at the limit of their budget cap (145 million dollars for 2022), and fear that they will have to sacrifice future developments on the cars to make up for serious accidents that might happen during the sprint races.
McLaren CEO Zak Brown told the BBC that some top teams have asked for a budget cap increase and one in particular has asked for a $5 million one.
“A couple of teams, and one team in particular, wanted a $5m budget cap increase, which was just ridiculous,” Brown said.
“[There are] no rational facts behind it. When you challenged them, they go to what if and could and you’ve got to anticipate. You sit there and go ‘This is just nonsense.'”
This is a request that the teams, that usually sit in the back of the standings, do not consider fair.
It will be difficult to reach an agreement without the approval of Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari, which, moreover, could also leverage customer teams to support the their cause.
According to Brown, the best solution would be to skip the format this year and maybe adopt it again in 2023.
“Maybe there can be a compromise raised and we raise it [the budget cap] a little bit, or we skip 2022, and a couple of these teams should have to explain to the fans why there is no sprint races.”
