Adrian Newey Reveals Huge Issue With F1 Cost Cap - 'No Longer Best-Paid Industry'

Adrian Newey has revealed how F1's cost cap has reduced pay competitiveness, causing talent loss and posing challenges for the sport's future.

Adrian Newey - Aston Martin / Aston Martin Press Release

Adrian Newey has revealed a huge issue with the current cost cap regulations in Formula 1.

The cost cap was introduced in F1 in 2021 to limit team spending and bring closer competition between top teams and those at the back.

While it aims to balance the field, Newey points out several hidden downsides, especially when it comes to pay and keeping talented people. He explained during an interview with Auto Motor und Sport, as quoted by Motorsport Week:

“The cost cap, there needs to be a way of controlling the cost for teams, or certainly the benefit from spending more in Formula 1 to make it simply an arms race where the team with the biggest budget wins – that I fully agree with.

“The cost cap, though, does come with a lot of hidden penalties, one of which is it actually means Formula 1 is no longer the best-paid industry.

“So for instance, at Red Bull, at the start if we lost people, it would almost invariably be to another F1 team."

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Cost caps in F1 are meant to manage how much teams spend each season. By 2024, the budget cap was set at $135 million, which will remain until at least 2025. It's part of broader financial rules that strive to even the playing field and improve the sport's sustainability. But, for F1 teams, this means they must rethink their spending and make tough choices about where to cut costs.

Recently, Newey noticed that people working in F1 are leaving for better salaries at technology companies and other racing teams, like those in the World Endurance Championship. He continued:

“Now we’re losing people to tech companies because they pay better. We’re losing people to WEC teams because they pay better.

“We’re struggling to get graduates because Formula 1 can’t afford to be the best-paying industry anymore, so it has a lot of, let’s say, unexpected penalties to it.

“But what it does mean is that you’ve effectively now got an engineering budget, and therefore the fear that spending more will mean you’ll disappear is theoretically disappeared, at which point, surely you free up the regulations rather than make them ever more restrictive.

“But unfortunately, it’s not what’s happening.”

For the latest F1 news, head over to F1 on SI.

2025 Formula One Season Schedule

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