Despite the withdrawal of Toyota, Honda, BMW and Renault limiting their exposure within the sport, the cost of competing in Formula One remains very high. Other than Mercedes, Ferrari and perhaps Renault teams are wholly reliant on sponsorship. And competition for sponsors is fierce.
Lotus is partially owned by the Malaysian Government, who have stated that no public money will be going to the team beyond some breaks on facilities at Sepang in KL.
In the past many new teams have not made it through the season. There have been a number of reasons, but it’s typically come down to starting the season under financed and either hoping to find additional money as the year goes on, or they just underestimated the costs involved.
I understand at least one of the new teams is still looking for substantial part of their finance packages. With this in mind it seems unlikly that every team on the entry list will make the grid in Bahrain, let alone still be competing in Abu Dhabi in November. With that in mind, clearly there are some concerns about the health of the series remaining.
There is little doubt that F1 is being forced to undergo a fairly fundamental change away from the big spending manufacturers. Money is what makes F1 go around and so far the FIA’s attempts to keep costs in check have met with only limited success.
For the foreseeable future the series is going rely much more on independent teams. These are employers whose business is primarily motor racing, not selling fleets of cars. This is how F1 used to be from the early 70’s up until the mid 90s, when manufacturers began to take over the teams that in many cases they had been suppliers too.
I think some of the big teams are concerned that this shift may alter the prestige of F1, and in turn reduce the vast sums of money the sport generates.
This income depends primarily on F1 continuing to offer hard racing, be seen as the cutting edge of engineering all while retaining the glamour and overt ostentation that make the sport so appealing both on TV and in person.
However if the circus starts to suffer in any way then it’s possible that the top series in the world could loose it’s edge and in return and hurt the revenue that makes the whole thing special.
