Red Bull's £60m solution to save F1 that could transform the sport forever – yet faces fierce opposition

Exclusive: Coronavirus pandemic is threatening the very existence of many Formula One teams and Red Bull boss Christian Horner believes it’s time for F1 to lift one of its longest traditions in order to save the sport’s future

Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner has called on Formula One to allow teams to buy cars from their rivals as it would slash their costs to just £63m ($80m) and help to keep their wheels turning during the coronavirus shutdown.

F1's regulations state that every squad "must design and manufacture certain key parts of its cars itself, including the chassis, which means that each team’s cars are unique." It has driven up their costs to an average of £190m annually as the teams try to outspend each other in a bid for victory.

Their biggest cost is research and development with Red Bull Racing's parent company spending £118.1m on it in 2018 alone according to its latest accounts. This is nearly six times the amount spent by the backmarkers so they stand little chance of success. It has fuelled concerns that their owners could put the brakes on their F1 outfits in order to cut costs during the coronavirus crisis with McLaren boss Zak Brown recently telling the BBC that he "could see four teams disappearing".

F1 is due to limit team budgets to £138m ($175m) next year but Horner fears that this won't do the trick. Driver salaries as well as the design, development and manufacture of the engines are excluded from the cap so there is no guarantee that it would make the minnows more competitive. Horner says they would stand more of a chance if they benefited from their bigger brothers' expertise which has propelled Red Bull Racing to four F1 titles.

Allowing backmarkers to buy their cars "would be the cheapest way to address their issue, their plight, and the quickest way to be competitive as well," says Horner. "You would save because you would just operate as a race team. You would have a limited development budget so you could quite easily operate, I would have thought very comfortably, at $80 million."

It would cut their costs by around 67 per cent and give them a more competitive car whilst the bigger teams would get revenue from selling it to them. It would be a significant change to F1’s DNA and this is highlighted in company documents which state that a "fundamental difference" between F1 and its American-rival IndyCar is that "unlike Formula 1, IndyCar teams are not required to be 'constructors' of their cars resulting in less diversity of technology as compared to Formula 1."

F1 may need to navigate its way around obstruction from Williams in order to get the 'customer cars' proposal to the finish line. The family-owned team is the second most successful outfit in F1 and prides itself on having achieved this independently. Allowing teams to buy expertise from their rivals flies in the face of this so Williams has blocked the introduction of customer cars in the past.

However, times have changed since then and Williams has finished in last place for the past two years despite being powered by the championship-winning Mercedes engine. To keep the team ticking over it recently took out a loan of at least £50m secured on its cars and factory in Oxfordshire.

"Williams would be better buying a Mercedes and going racing," says Horner. He fears that customer cars will be blocked despite the gravity of the situation in F1 which has seen the first nine races of the season get the red light due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Sometimes you can't save people that don't want to be saved

Christian Horner

The teams reportedly plan to reduce the budget cap to £118m ($150m) as an interim cost-cutting measure and Horner says he thinks customer cars are "probably a second stage. I don't think it's on the agenda today but I think it should be. You would have thought now would be the time to put this through but sometimes you can't save people that don't want to be saved."

He adds that it is pointless blocking customer cars as F1 is heading in that direction regardless. In 2015 F1 relaxed its regulations to allow outfits to buy in more parts than before. America's Haas team was the first to take advantage of this and uses a chassis from Italian manufacturer Dallara which also designs the cars for the F2 junior series.

Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll followed suit and has entered into a partnership with Mercedes since buying the assets of the Force India team in 2018 and renaming it Racing Point.

Customer cars are "happening anyway," says Horner. "If you look at what Force India has done, or Racing Point whatever they are called these days, rather than doing it through reverse engineering, just sell them the cars."