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Former World Champion Alain Prost has said that Formula One needs to cut short the expense on the aerodynamic performances rather than restricting the engine costs.
The sport is set for a landslide of changes in next season as the current V8 engines are going to be replaced by V6 turbo engines, which means that the teams will be facing a huge rise in costs next season compared to this time around.
“I think it’s already late, but it’s never too late for sure. Budgets are too high considering the revenue, the sponsors, and there’s a lot of things that should have been done a long time ago in my opinion. But it is also a competition and it is very difficult, when it’s a competition, to stop somebody who has more money,” Prost said when asked about the need for addressing the rise in costs.
“If you cannot stop that, which I think is very difficult to do, you need to find other ideas. For example, F1 spends a lot of money on the aerodynamics and in my opinion I cannot understand why we put so much importance on aerodynamics. I understand that big teams have wind tunnels and things like this, but you can only reduce the importance of aerodynamics by [changing the] rules. Have a flat bottom [to the car], go back to the wider tyres to have more mechanical grip rather than aero. Then, okay, you can keep the wind tunnels but the importance will be less,” he added.
Prost also said that the budget cap would be a good thing but added that it would be difficult task to achieve.
“We have ugly cars. You cannot put a sponsor on a car and see it properly. All these things come from rules that, in my opinion, should change a little bit. In the past we have seen Toyota spend a huge amount of money without winning a race, so money is not everything, it’s where you put the money and we have to think about that. A budget cap is a good thing but I am sure it is quite difficult to get it. So let’s put the important things where they should be,” he said.
