13/01/2019
NEWS STORY
It is estimated that when Formula One introduces its budget cap, depending on the form it takes and the actual spending limit placed on teams, across the board upwards of 4,000 jobs could be lost.
Despite the obvious problems this would cause for the 4,000 and the resultant knock-on effect across the industry, Renault boss, Cyril Abiteboul, sees a positive aspect in that the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari will be seriously distracted.
"We know we have a huge deficit in resources against the teams that ultimately we want to fight against," he says, according to Motorsport.com. "But we also know that things like the budget cap at some point will kick in.
"It makes no sense to stack up resources knowing that we will have to reduce and go down," he added, his team having increased its own headcount noticeably since its return as a constructor in 2016. "In a certain respect it will be most unprofessional to do that, to hire people that we may have to lose in the future.
"We are exactly at the tipping point of where F1 expects manufacturer teams to be," he insists, "so we need to accept to stand still.
"I would say that our disadvantage will be the resources that we have in the next two years," he admits. "But our advantage is that we will not have the distraction of having to think about the future. We can focus on going racing, and not having to think about a redundancy plan that will be a major distraction, let’s face it, for the management of teams that are much larger than us. There are pros and cons, I am not moaning, we have a plan and we will execute it."