Do F1 chiefs care enough to fix crisis?

If it had been unforeseen, and warning bells hadn't been ringing for months, then the troubles of Caterham and Marussia this week could have been accepted as just another chapter in the long history of teams coming and going in Formula 1.

After all, since the F1 World Championship came into being in 1950, 164 teams have participated. Only nine will be on the grid at Austin. The potential for another two to join the 153 who are now historical footnotes may not be statistically of huge importance, but because of where F1 stands right now, it matters so much more.

After months of discussion about teams collapsing if costs in F1 were not brought under control, the events of the past week are much harder to stomach. It's one thing to be caught on the hop by circumstance. It's quite another to be given warning after warning and fail to react.

When the smaller teams shouted out earlier this year that F1 was heading for financial crisis if nothing was done about expenditure, no one wanted to listen. The big teams marched on regardless, scuppering an original agreement for a cost cap and putting in place money-saving measures that will barely have an impact on their catering budgets.

Todt gave up on trying to get teams to agree © XPB

The sport's chiefs didn't respond either. FIA president Jean Todt realised that the governing processes of F1 meant there was nothing he could do to force the issue
if others wanted to block him, so he reluctantly gave up.

Nor did Bernie Ecclestone particularly want to be involved. He was more worried about his own legal entanglements in Munich and keeping alive the income streams from tracks and television companies that his paymaster CVC is so desperate to suck out of the sport.

Time and again he said it would be better if the grid was trimmed a bit. The approach of the big teams, the FIA and Ecclestone has culminated in not just F1's smallest field for years, but it has opened up a very real prospect of there being even more trouble ahead.

In sporting terms, the absence of Caterham and Marussia means teams that were previously labelled as 'midfield', such as Sauber, Lotus and Toro Rosso, will now be relegated to fighting at the back of the pack. That's not going to help them to go chasing the big sponsors they so need to stay afloat.

There will also be knock-on effects for manufacturers. Ferrari and Renault may each now lose a customer engine deal, costing them income during a time of increased expenditure.

Should one of their customers defect to Honda in 2016, as is possible, then suddenly they are building expensive engines just for themselves.

Financially that's not sustainable.

A potential move to introduce third cars for teams in 2015 to fill the gaps would also trigger potential disaster. Who pays for the extra car? What impact will it have on the smaller teams? How does it protect the sport from further trouble? It's not a long-term solution.

The bigger teams don't want things to change © XPB

The best way forward has always been to keep at least 10 independent teams alive with enough income to cover their costs. And for a sport that generates more than
£1billion a year in revenue to not be able to sustain that number of cars is illogical. However, that's the legacy of the selfish game we are in right now.

There has been a land-grab of the money by the bigger teams, and no push back from the paymasters to tell them to get a grip on themselves and think of the bigger picture.

Former FIA president Max Mosley suggested to me earlier this year that having uneven finances up and down the grid should be no more acceptable than teams enjoying bigger engines or better tyres.

"The big, rich teams don't want everybody to have the same money," he said. "They've got an advantage because they've got more money. It's a simple fact that if you've got three times as much money as I have, you might just as well have a bigger engine.

"A bigger engine alone doesn't guarantee wins, but everything else being equal, it does. So if you want sporting fairness, you've got to give everybody the same money."

The answer seems obvious. But is anyone listening and do those who can make a difference really care? I fear we all know the answer to that.

This week's AUTOSPORT magazine - available online and in shops now - includes DIETER RENCKEN's comprehensive analysis of every Formula 1 team's income and expenditure as part of in-depth coverage of the crisis prompted by Marussia and Caterham's problems