Former FIA President Max Mosley is urging F1 to curtail its current spending spree or risk a very bleak future.
With several teams wrestling with financial straits and team chiefs failing to get their act together with regard to cutting back on expenditures, Mosley believes it is now urgent for all relevant parties to sit down and collectively revamp Grand Prix racing's financial structure.
"At least half the teams simply can't compete because they haven't got enough money, and that to me is wrong," Mosley said in an interview with DPA News.
The Briton labels F1's current system unfair as the wealthier teams are awarded a larger size of the sport's revenue stream, and are therefore in a position to invest more heavily in their quest for success.
"You obviously wouldn't allow one team to run a bigger engine than another team and yet if one team has got five times as much money the effect is exactly the same as if they had a bigger engine. It's not fair from the sporting point of view."
Max Mosley also considers that F1's technology expansion, while amazing, is being ignored by the public, and justifiably so.
"Of course the technology is amazing but a great deal of it is concealed so the public don't actually see – 90 per cent, 95 per cent of what goes on is not visible to an outsider and even kept secret within the teams. So it's changed enormously - whether it's changed for the better; I think it's gone too far."
Mosley concluded his interview by a surprising comment on the sport's current management which he regards as too concentrated, this in spite of his past and fruitful relationship with former ally Bernie Ecclestone. "If everything is in one pair of hands then I think you have a problem."
One might recall that in 2000, the FIA leased F1's commercial rights to Ecclestone for a period of 100 years which started in 2011. The deal between the two close associates was sealed for the sum of just $360 million - or approximately 18 months of F1's profits at the time. FOM's acquisition set in motion a mutation of F1's shareholder base as Ecclestone profitably sold shares to a succession of banks and media companies before private equity company CVC purchased a controlling interest in the business in 2005.
Mosley was at the forefront of many commendable safety initiatives in F1, but his quest for reducing costs through a budget cap plan failed miserably. Almost a decade later, as several teams struggle with a precarious financial state, fundamental issues remain, the origins of which may perhaps be partly traced to Mosley's past governance and the free reign of commercial power provided to Ecclestone.
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