Mar.23 (GMM) Existing and potential small F1 teams on Monday offered backing to plans to make the sport more competitive for privateers.
Officially, the FOTA team alliance is vehemently opposed to the voluntary budget caps for next year -- so much so that ill-informed sources are pondering the possibility of a Melbourne boycott.But Silverstone based Force India on Monday cautiously backed the cut-price concept, director of business affairs Ian Phillips insisting that "the days of spending what you want are gone"."I don't know if 30 million (pounds) is the right figure, but it's the sort of figure we should be aiming for," he said.Prospective 2010 entrant USGPE (US Grand Prix Engineering), through its sporting director Peter Windsor, heralded the FIA's moves as "commendable, courageous" and "very positive".David Richards was more guarded, but he admitted he is still looking to bring his Prodrive organisation into formula one."I think there are lots of discussions, so it would be wise to let the dust settle before we see what happens," he is quoted as saying by GP Week."There's a lot of water to go under the bridge before any of these things happen."Richards, however, confirmed that F1 is "somewhere we should be at some point, but ... we wouldn't be there to make up the numbers, and we wouldn't be there to lose our shirts."
