New money row brewing in F1 paddock
Apr.9 - A new financial row is brewing in the Formula 1 paddock.
As previously reported, some teams are calling for an adjustment to the $140 million budget cap as raging inflation hurts the team's limited funds.
"At the moment there are still three teams against it," revealed AlphaTauri's team boss Franz Tost.
"We would be in favour of improving it a bit, because the costs - especially in terms of logistics - have risen insanely," he told Sky Deutschland.
"We're already way over the limit."
Alfa Romeo team manager Beat Zehnder confirmed: "We're paying 160 percent more for air freight than in 2020. Improvements have to be made."
The Russia-Ukraine war in particular means air freight is steadily becoming unviable, forcing the teams to rely almost exclusively on ships.
"These ships are getting bigger and bigger," Zehnder said.
"Today we have ships with 28,000 containers, so loading and unloading takes five days. That used to be a day and a half."
He admits that the big teams are looking to increase their allowed annual budgets from $140 million to up to $148m.
"We could actually get by with less," Zehnder said.
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i could have sworn i read ok, not so recently about the over capacity for sea freight? IE to many ships., if that is the case then there shouldn't be an issue with unloading times so much , also if stuffs not going to Russia by plane and not leaving Russia by plane, surely that's extra capacity too, seems to me this huge rise in Air freight costs,is a bit of billybullshite , and as a;ways in times of war there are profiteers a plenty in the marketplace, but all naturally IMO
That has always been a problem. The old supply and demand. Profiteers always take advantage of it. Not sure what the solutions are?
The problem could be solved by agreeing a price for air freight for the season for all teams, I mean DHL etc buy there fuel in advance for the yr , so be like on a fixed price contract for domestic energy But it'll never happen
Yeah, well if the dimbulbs would listen and make the schedule geo-centric they could save millions. I had no idea until recently that the teams need 5 complete sets of pit/paddock equipment to satisfy shipping schedules. My gawd, who's running this deal?
And one of those containers with Merc is Lewises wardrobe and hairstylist kit...
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