Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says Formula 1's new budget cost cap is having the unwanted effect of trigging a 'race to the bottom' in which teams are being forced to make experienced staff redundant to meet the spending ceiling.
The new cost cap puts a top limit on a team's spending came into effect in 2021. The maximum spending was to be capped to just $135m for the upcoming 2023 season but has been revised to cover the cost of staging additional sprint races.
It excludes driver salaries and the wages of the team's top three highest paid executives - typically led by the team principal and chief technical officer - but includes everyone else involved in car design, manufacturing and operation.
Teams have scrambled to come in under the budget cap and have used various strategies including moving senior technical staff out of F1 and into other projects.
Examples of that include Aston Martin's Andrew Green who was moved sideways into the manufacturer's road car and related technology projects, while Mercedes' Geoff Willis is now working on his team's America's Cup programme.
Horner admitted that the cost cap was making it hard for teams to find ways of retaining key staff. "Of course,” he said. “You can't carry anybody within the team, and I think that everybody has to warrant their place within the cap."
Red Bull itself has just announced the departure of senior engineer Rob Marshall who has been headhunted by McLaren.
Marshall was one of those staff who had been moved out of Red Bull's F1 operations because of the cap but who was clearly keen to get back into the pit lane again when the opportunity arose at McLaren.
“Rob was as focused on other projects in recent years, and the offer that McLaren made is probably half their cap!" Horner said, "You can't blame him for wanting to go and do that.”
Horner's own worry was the idea that teams would seek to offload high earning senior staff and try and make do with more junior, less experienced personnel filling the gaps.
“The problem is you have long-standing personnel that have contributed a significant amount that you don't want to see forced out of their roles because of the cap," he said.
“You have to make sure it's not a race to the bottom,” he warned. "Just because you can justify ten youngsters versus an experienced hand.
"That's the constant debate that you that you have, and where we've had redundancies through the cap."
Horner cited the example of Jayne Poole who until recently was chief operating officer and director of HR at Red Bull, but who was recently let go.
"She was a redundancy that we made because we couldn't justify a role within the cap," Horner admitted.
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