Sauber has added its support to renewed calls for a budget cap in Formula 1, with the team hoping that one can be in place as early as next season.
F1's commercial rights manager Bernie Ecclestone suggested last month that the future of the sport would be more secure if teams were given a strict limit on what they could spend. Now Sauber CEO Monisha Kaltenborn has revealed that her team is supportive of such a move, and hopes that action is taken immediately to make sure it happens.
"We started it with the Resource Restriction Agreement (RRA), and that in itself was already an important step, but of course it is far from the only one you need," she said in an interview with the official Formula 1 website about cost control in F1. We now have to evolve it to the next step, and in my view the future should indeed lie in some kind of budget cap under which each and every team could do what they want to, because we all have different strengths.
"Looking at our team, for example, we have a good infrastructure and a good wind tunnel, so it would allow us to benefit from that. Others have other assets. Overall, I think it would make Formula 1 more interesting as it would also mean that we would all use different strategies and take different approaches to the business and the sport."
With Ecclestone closing is on finalizing a new Concorde Agreement from the start of next season, Kaltenborn sees the perfect opportunity to introduce a budget cap in 2013. When asked what timeframe she envisaged it being enforced, she said: "I think very soon. I think that we should have the next step already in place for next season and take it from there. Next season for me should already see a major step forward in the financial feasibility of a team.
"When the current Concorde Agreement comes to an end at the end of this season, I think it would be a good time to set some kind of rules."