Adrian Newey has revealed that Formula 1 is no longer the “best-paid industry” in motorsport because of the hidden penalties within its cost cap regulations.
The technical guru, who is one month away from officially joining Aston Martin from Red Bull, has made the sensational claim that, due to teams being penalised, the knock-on effect has been that key personnel are able to find other work within other realms of motorsport, as well as deterring youngsters from working in F1 after their graduation.
The F1 financial limits, introduced in 2021, restrict teams’ spending in a bid to reduce the on-track gap between sides at the front and back of the grid.
Newey has stated that, whilst the cost cap has obvious benefits which are positive for F1, the punishments involved for breaching the limits have wider drawbacks.
“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,” Newey told Auto Motor und Sport.
“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.
“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.”
From a pamphlet to a ‘bible’
One of the first tasks for Newey at Aston Martin will be tackling the 2026 regulations, through which the team will hope that he can help steer the team towards the front of the grid.
Newey also commented on the vast changes in Formula 1’s technical regulations from when he made his nascent steps into the sport back in the 1980s.
Asked what period of the sport in which Newey has most enjoyed, he replied: “The ones with the most freedom, that’s easy!”
“When I first got into Formula 1, I had on my desk at work a copy of the 1973 Technical Regulations, and it’s about three or four pages… now we have this bible and that’s before you put all the technical directives in!
“It’s so prescribed now, and I think it’s a shame.”
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