Red Bull boss Christian Horner takes dig at ‘smaller F1 teams’
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Christian Horner has suggested that the current F1 committee voting system favours the “smaller teams” on the grid and wants to see the FIA make some changes to the current format. Whenever there is an F1 committee, 30 votes are to be distributed with each team getting a single vote.
Each team boss on the grid gets a vote and then 10 are given to the FIA. The system has had it’s critics in the past with McLaren boss Zak Brown suggesting a move to a secret ballot to help stop unhealthy affiliations up and down the grid.
Horner was against the idea at the time, saying it would be a “shame” if F1 went in that direction. But the Red Bull boss’ own concern with the voting system is how the “smaller teams” can end up swaying the vote on certain matters that end up affecting the bigger suppliers without even helping themselves.
“It’s always difficult to judge the balance of the votes,” he told RacingNews365. “Sometimes it’s a frustrating process. You could almost say that the smaller F1 teams have too much of a voice.
“With that they can get things implemented where the big ones teams suffer from and which the smaller teams are not actually affected by. Especially through the budget cap. The FIA should take a good look at that together with the FOM [Formula One Management].
“A simple argument: technological partnerships, for example. These have always been extremely important in F1. However, if that technology then falls within the budget cap, as for example a new laptop that a computer sponsor wants to show the world, then you have to reject that kind of thing because it falls below the ceiling.”
The F1 budget cap also came under scrutiny this year with Red Bull being adjudged to have overspent for 2021. Horner accepts there are positives to have come out of the budget cap being implemented, but insists it’s far from a perfect system.
“It’s a very, very complicated set of rules. Of course it will change over the years. But what I would like to see is that there is less pressure on it,” he added. “The most important cost items are the technical and sporting regulations. If we can put more emphasis on how those regulations drive up costs, then there will also be less pressure on the budget cap.
“There are certain things that, inevitably, will be difficult to enforce, or even question whether it’s legal to enforce them, when you’re talking about a salary cap and things like that. So it’s a process with a learning curve. There are many parts of the budget cap that are positive, but there are also certain areas where we can further improve and develop the rules.”
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