Spending caps in F1 'don't work', insists Ferrari president

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Amid rumours that Formula One's new owner Liberty Media is set to impose a new budget cap on team spending in the sport in a bid to improve competition, Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne has said that he doesn't believe formal spending restrictions can ever work.

"The reality is Formula One is an extremely expensive sport," he told The Sun newspaper this week.

"Despite all these interventions by the FIA to try to limit spending, the teams have found other ways to spend," he pointed out.

“I accept the goal of reducing costs but much depends on us," he added. "I don’t believe a budget cap can work."

Despite a major team's budget believed to be approaching something in the region of £400 million per annum, Ferrari has still struggled for results in recent years. It endured a winless 2016 season despite the best efforts of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen, and ended the year in third place in the constructors championship behind Red Bull Racing.

"If the budget was used well or badly, I don’t know," he admitted. "When I look at old reports — ten years and even further back — I deduce that Ferrari has never held back when it comes to spending.

"If I look at the last four of five years, we haven’t saved a euro, we have simply redistributed our spending to other areas.

"This is the old problem for all those who try to impose limits on car development: if areas are left open, spending concentrates in this area," Marchionne added.

"In principle, [a spending cap] is very noble, but the effect never ends up giving the necessary results."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.