- Sauber
Big teams have an agenda - Sauber
Sauber team principal Monisha Kaltenborn thinks Formula One's bigger teams have an agenda to drive the smaller teams off the grid and alter the DNA of the championship.
F1 teetering on the precipice
- "Force India, Lotus and Sauber had been looking to get a base payment from the sport's commercial rights holder to help them compete with the top teams, but that now appears to be off the table. Instead they are concerned that the status quo will remain in place, making it increasingly difficult for them to compete with F1's top teams. Eventually they are concerned they will be pressured into running customer cars in order to survive, creating a two tier Formula One with a constructors' championship and a teams' championship. Such a move would fundamentally change the face of F1 and leave the sport's future in the balance with the danger that one constructor pulling out would kill two teams."
- Read ESPN's Final Stint here
On Sunday the Times reported Red Bull and Ferrari will run three-car teams next season, though that was immediately denied by both teams in the build-up to the Brazilian Grand Prix. This came after crisis talks to find solutions to F1's cost crisis, triggered by threat of a boycott at the US Grand Prix from the struggling trio of Sauber, Force India and Lotus, yielded little on Saturday evening.
At that meeting Kaltenborn says certain proposals were made to the smaller teams which would give weight to the argument the big teams have an end goal in mind, having already baulked at suggestions they should give up a share of their revenues to help alleviate the cost of competing.
When asked if a two-tier championship or customer car scenario had been put to Sauber, Kaltenborn replied: "As ideas, but that tells you where it is going."
Kaltenborn added: "Looking at the proposals which have been made you have to believe there is some agenda, don't you? The agenda seems to be that people are looking at four or five names to stay in here, and when ideas are offered to us of a year-old chassis or engines which are maybe a different spec or series, there must be agenda. As there's no-one reacting to it in front we don't know whose agenda it is.
"That's why it's important we said what we had to on this point because these things are changing every day, but the fact is it cannot remain like this. It's no way we want to work and can work and the more these ideas are coming up the more we three get the feeling that maybe some people don't want us to be around and maybe the sport is supposed to be changed in a very different way."
Kaltenborn thinks one of the biggest problems is the fact the bigger teams no longer view F1 as just a sport.
"The big teams out there use this as a simple sporting marketing platform. It's nothing more for them. They talk of it as being a sport, about Benetton, all this stuff where is that now? We are not out here with, as they are saying, begging bowls.
"We also work quite well in times, if you look back, when you had a Toyota with a horrendously high budget, and we had our little budget but we used to be on the podium often. We don't need to be a threat to them but we are part of the show and it's very disrespectful to behave like this to teams within the sport and even more disrespectful towards the fans."
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