Sauber team principal Monisha Kaltenborn has dismissed claims from F1’s engine manufacturers that reducing the cost of power units will impact on their overall business models.
Maurizio Arrivabene stated Ferrari’s decision to veto a reduction in the price of power units was based on the commercial aspect of protecting its business model, while Toto Wolff said Mercedes already makes a loss on every power unit it supplies to a customer team. Speaking exclusively to F1i, Kaltenborn praised FIA president Jean Todt for trying to defend the independent teams with a cost cap but feels a move to introduce a new type of power unit is premature.
“Well [Todt] does say - which I absolutely believe - that he is acting in the interest of smaller teams because he sees that it is a major risk that we could lose some more teams,” Kaltenborn said. “However, I think it’s the other way round. I think it’s because of all these other complicated technical regulations including that engine which has been the biggest trigger of hiking up the costs in the last two years, so actually we have to simplify that.
“We have to find a way to reduce these engine costs. What the FIA has said very correctly is set a certain price. Now, as a customer to engines we know that the engine supplier will make their engine anyway, I don’t think they will have the serious discussion of ‘shall we make our own engine or buy someone else’s engine?’
“Now they have their business plan or model in place anyway, and I’m very sure that they would not put risk factors like how many customers they need to make their business plan work; that’s going to be a standalone business plan, without calculating how many customers you need to have, so that argument for me doesn't count.”
And Kaltenborn says it should not be overlooked that customer teams will still be paying significant money to purchase a power unit and covering the costs of manufacture.
“We are not asking that people gift us the engine, but where the price is now is definitely too high. So in reality the solution should be somewhere in the middle. I think the price the FIA has mentioned - and this is taking up the FIA’s argument - means the manufacturers will still not make a loss, which is important to them, and yet it’s an affordable engine.
“I think that’s the right target to set and where we should find ourselves rather than having a discussion of ‘do we want this engine or not?’ We have this engine, this is reality, this represents the kind of needs you need to cater to looking at the market, so hybrid is a key word out there in the market, fuel efficiency, efficiency generally, so I don’t think it would be right if we suddenly decide to move away from this.”
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