Former FIA president Max Mosley believes Formula 1 risks “collapse” if it continues as it is – with several outfits facing financial difficulty.
Whilst financial insecurity isn’t a new thing in F1, recent times have been particularly difficult with the collapse of HRT, Caterham and Marussia.
Meanwhile Sauber, Force India and Lotus face shrinking budgets as they struggle to find the necessary funding to design and run two competitive cars.
The Briton, who headed up the FIA between 1993 and 2009, thinks the sport needs to take a look at itself and then agree a new path to take in terms of prize money distribution and cost cutting.
“At least half the teams simply can’t compete because they haven’t got enough money, and that to me is wrong,” he told DPA.
“You obviously wouldn’t allow one team to run a bigger engine than another team and yet if one team has got five times as much money the effect is exactly the same as if they had a bigger engine.
“It’s not fair from the sporting point of view,” he added.
However he is aware that agreeing a deal which everyone will agree to is easier said than done and it’s something he has experience in, after implementing a budget cap, only to have a handful of teams threaten a breakaway series unless it was dropped.
“The only way to deal with it is to get everybody to agree,” he noted. “You can sit all the teams down and say ‘look collectively we’ve got a massive problem because some of you have got enough money but most of you haven’t and if we go on like this Formula 1 is going to collapse, so I am inviting you all to agree to a change’.
“But they would have to all agree. You can’t do it without unanimity, unfortunately.”
