Other website sections

»Sports Market Reports

»Sports Jobs

»Tenders

»Directory

»Conferences

McLaren is adamant that costs are coming down in Formula 1 despite some observers claiming there has been little evidence of it so far.

A stand-off developed last year between the FIA and the teams over the governing body's attempts to impose a budget cap on the sport.

However, following a threat by the Formula One Teams' Association to launch a breakaway series, a contract was eventually agreed to bring costs down to “early 1990s levels” by 2011.

Although the ban on refuelling has helped cut budgets, the teams are all busy developing their cars for the long season ahead.

But McLaren's engineering director Paddy Lowe said: "The teams agreed a contract which is called the 'Resource Restriction Agreement'. That does ramp in a set of caps: we've got the wind tunnel and CFD [computational fluid dynamics] caps which we've been running for well over a year now and we've got external expenditure and headcount caps. The caps have a glide path so they ramp in over last year, this year and next year.

"We are all working to those, I hope – we certainly are at McLaren – and they have involved us being much more precise and measured in how we use the different elements of the budget in those categories.

"So although it might not appear that things have changed, they have. They will get tougher – we're in the middle year now. It will be tougher over the next 12 months."

Lowe continued: "We still have to put on a good show – some interest and spectacle. It's a sport to provide entertainment and interest and excitement, so the last thing we want is the appearance of having all turned into dinosaurs that don't do anything.

"I would hope we could still continue by being more efficient. We're already finding great efficiencies through just focusing our efforts in that direction. Things are changing behind the scenes and in a sense if you say you can't see the changes then that should be a good thing."