19/08/2010
NEWS STORY
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Virgin Racing's John Booth has hit out at Bernie Ecclestone following the F1 supremo's claim that two of the current teams will fall by the wayside and that the sport only needs ten teams.
Ecclestone clearly has a short and somewhat selective memory, forgetting that the new teams which entered the sport this season were enticed into it a time when budgets were to be capped at around £40m. Furthermore, fresh independent blood was needed as manufacturers like Honda, BMW and Toyota jumped ship.
However, that didn't stop the F1 supremo sniffily saying that the new teams weren't wanted, telling the Daily Telegraph that the sport only needs ten teams.
"I think there are a couple of teams in Formula One who really shouldn't be there. They are a bit out of their depth at the moment," he opined.
"All we ever want is 10 teams," he added. "Lotus is a good name. I wouldn't want to lose them. But in general this year has been a bit of a nuisance because it has cost money to keep these teams in. It has cost a lot of money to pay for them to compete. They haven't really and truly given us value for being there."
His comments were a slap in the face for the newbies who came into F1 when the sport needed them, as Booth confirms. "I wasn't particularly pleased, because comments like that for a team like ours can do great damage," he told Germany's Motorsport-Total.com. "It's difficult for us at the moment as it is for other teams, and for all the new teams", adding such remarks were "destabilising.
"If you look at what we have built up so far, it's not all bad. In Formula One there have been probably 30 or 40 new teams, some of which never qualified for a race. But we are there at the start of every race and, step by step, we are getting closer. We are where we expected we would be, and maybe even a bit further ahead than that."