“It will move us up in the championship,” Alpine not in favor of raising budget cap for development of teams
Otmar Szafnauer
Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer has stated that they do not have any issue with the budget cap proposed by F1 authorities. The budget cap is basically implied to limit the teams’ spending on their cars, which would stop one team from being dominant on the entire sport and make it more competitive.
However, with the inflation this year, the most competitive teams are having issues with this year’s $140 million budget cap. Red Bull team principal Christian Horner and other teams have been campaigning for the authorities to raise this budget cap for teams to develop.
Horner even suggested that as many as 7 teams won’t be able to attend this year’s final 4 races if the budget cap remains the same.
Watch: The 2022 Formula One budget cap explained
But Otmar Szafnauer, team principal of Alpine, thinks otherwise. He stated that they (Alpine) are not in favor of raising the budget cap, because they;ve laid out their year’s spending “budget” earlier this year, because they had “anticipated” the inflation earlier, and would not like to change that.
“I welcome that,” Otmar has no issues with the budget cap
When asked about the budget cap, Otmar stated that he, nor his team had no issues with it, and it might as well help them move up in the championship.
He also said that Alpine are not debating over the increase in the budget cap because they had pre-planned their spending on the car even if there is an inflation.
“No, we are not in favour of that,” GPFans quoted Otmar
“Unfortunately, we have set our budgets out early. We kind of anticipated a little bit of the inflation, inflation didn’t just creep up on us.
“So, if you look back at December, inflation was already – the RPI was already at seven per cent and most teams do their budgets between November and December for the following year.
“For us, it wasn’t a surprise so, therefore, we planned for it. We’re still under the cap, even though we didn’t plan for as high freight costs as we are now experiencing, but we’re still under.
“If we can do it, we’re sure others can do it too. So I’m not for just increasing the cap.”
He suggested that teams should focus on saving up the money instead of taking the easy route to increase the budget cap.
Also read: “Budget cap to be raised immediately”: Andreas Seidl demands immediate action
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