Without a budget cap, Tost sees 'two class society' ahead for F1

If Formula 1 doesn't drastically reduce costs, the current divide between the sport's manufacturer teams and the others will only increase, insists Toro Rosso boss Franz Tost.

The issue of imposing a mandatory limit on spending in F1 - the elusive budget cap - is a divisive subject that has been talked about for years.

However, it finally looks set to become a reality with soft measures scheduled to be introduced in 2019 as part of Liberty Media's plan to gradually reduce costs over a multi-year period.

For Tost, reducing spending has become paramount, as a means to level the F1 playing field and boost the competition.

"When the teams were private teams we didn't need it, because private teams never spend so much money," said Tost in an interview with Motorsport.com.

"The reason why the costs in Formula 1 increased so dramatically, it's because of the manufacturers.

"The FIA and FOM must find the way to come down with the costs, because otherwise we have a two class society in Formula 1: the manufacturer teams and the rest. This is what happens now.

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"There are three top teams, and the rest are in another league. Because if you look to the results, the cars behind the three top teams are 20-30-40 seconds behind, and the commercial rights holder must find the way that we have interesting races.

"Fortunately this year and also last year [Sebastian] Vettel is fighting against [Lewis] Hamilton for the championship because otherwise people would not watch any more Formula 1, because it is boring," he added.

"And there we must be aware about this and what we have to achieve is that minimum three or four drivers and five or six teams are fighting for the championship, and the championship is decided in the last race and not a couple of races before."

The concept of a budget cap, or rather its efficient policing, has often been met by a fair amount of skepticism by the F1 community which believes that big teams will always find clever ways to circumvent the rules of spending.

Tost calls that argument "nonsense" however, insisting the FIA's ability to properly monitor and control various activities such as CFD or wind tunnel work has been demonstrated.

"I think it is doable," said the Austrian. "There were always arguments that you cannot control it, which is nonsense. You can control everything.

"The FIA, and FOM, whoever, just have to start from the very beginning onwards about how to control it.

"If I would decide, I would send to every team a person to control all the financial statements every week or every month. That's it.

"Like now, for example, on the technical side you can control everything, yeah? We are even not allowed to test without passing crash tests and all this kind of stuff.

"So why shouldn't you be able to control [budgets]? This is nonsense, you can control everything if you want."

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