Lotus Team Principal Gérard Lopez has criticised the spiralling costs in Formula 1, claiming that its spending compared to leading junior series GP2 is “ridiculous”.
Formula 1 figures have been attempting to reach a compromise on the financial situation in the sport for months, with the crisis escalating after the collapse of Marussia and Caterham last month.
Lopez cited the cost of running a GP2 team, claiming that Formula 1 spending €300 million per year more than its feeder series makes figures from the sport’s top echelon “the worst managers in the world”.
“Because people in F1 actually do care about racing, some of them forget some economic realities – and there’s something called the Law of Diminishing Returns,” said Lopez.
“I take a GP2 team, or a GP2 car, and I make it race around this track [the Circuit of The Americas]. It’s not going to be ridiculous. It’s going to be down by a couple of seconds, four, five, six, maybe seven seconds. The whole GP2 team for the whole season is going to cost €4million.
“Are we really that much better? I mean are we really better to the point that a team needs to spend €300 million to be six seconds faster? We’re not. I wouldn’t accept that argument from anybody. We’re not €300 million better if you take the top teams compared to a GP2 team.
“So it’s a bit ridiculous to say that you need to spend that kind of money to have that kind of performance – because that makes us the worst managers in the world. If I took a financial view of this sport, comparing GP2 to F1, and the so-called Law of Diminishing Returns, we are most probably the worst managers there are.”
