Ecclestone: New teams’ budgets “not sufficient” 12/03/2010 |
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Bernie Ecclestone believes Formula 1’s three new teams will not have deep enough pockets to be competitive this season.
Virgin and Hispania drew up their business plans thinking a £40m cap was to be introduced, but the plan was thrown out after the established teams threatened a breakaway. Lotus is also understood to have based its budget on the assumption there would be a cap.
Commercial rights chief Ecclestone said: "The cap would have given them a chance. I always warned that a budget limit would not work. Now the new teams find that their budgets are not sufficient."
However, Virgin boss Richard Branson remains confident his team can still have an impact.
"I think the one thing the Virgin team will prove is that you can have a really good racing team, running very fast, within a very tight budget,” he added. “There's no need to do massively expensive wind-tunnel testing, or all the other things that they do to get the extra second or two. Give it a year or two. You cannot just build a new team from scratch and immediately start beating Ferrari.
"We'll show the other F1 teams that they could reduce their budgets and have just as much fun. You don't need to spend hundreds of millions to have fun."
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