Haas boss Guenther Steiner says the measures Formula One has taken steps to future-proof itself during the coronavirus pandemic has exposed just how financially flawed its model has been.
F1 will introduce a $145 million budget cap for 2021 and a sliding development scale which will give the team finishing 10th in the championship the most car time in the windtunnel the following season, with the champions getting the least. It has also been forced to push back its complete overhaul of the current cars from 2021 to 2022 to ensure teams were not pumping money into another project immediately after the pandemic.
The measures have been to ease the financial burden on F1’s teams, including Haas, the grid’s newest team and its smallest outfit. Steiner has been a long-time advocate of such changes but says it should not have taken a global pandemic to get the current solutions.
Speaking on the latest episode of the ESPN F1 Podcast, Steiner said: “I personally never experienced something like this [in my racing career]. What I got aware [of] is how fragile we are.
“It’s not a small thing, it’s a pandemic, but economically we should not be in this position that we are this fragile as an industry. We don’t go racing for three months and we are on the verge of collapsing, which is amazing.”
In the wide-ranging interview, Steiner opens up on the new rule changes and the season-opening double-header at Austria’s Red Bull ring. The first of those, the Austrian Grand Prix, takes place on July 5.
Listen to the full episode here.