Raikkonen affair a warning for all of F1

Not since the world stared into the abyss of financial armageddon on the infamous week that coincided with the 2008 Japanese Grand Prix at Fuji, has a Formula 1 paddock's chatter been so downbeat about the future health of the sport.

While corporate guests partied on their yachts in the marina, and the glorious backdrop of the Yas Viceroy hotel delivered the image of a high-tech, billion-dollar sport being played out, the word 'crisis' was being murmured once again in corners of the teams' office units up and down the paddock.

The catalyst for this talk was nothing to do with rule changes, declining television audiences or F1's owners CVC taking more money out of the sport.

Instead, the dark clouds were swirling over F1's future thanks to Kimi Raikkonen's pay dispute with Lotus.

Having long bubbled away behind the scenes, it exploded in public in a way nobody could have expected.

The Finn had gone hard-line over the matter, demanding he get paid in full or else he was not getting on a plane to Abu Dhabi.

In the end a temporary agreement was reached for him to participate at Yas Marina, but the soap opera that surrounded the team turned the spotlight on Lotus's finances that eventually spread out to engulf almost every outfit on the grid.

And it wasn't hard to work out that at the end of a month when Lotus's staff were again paid late because of delays in securing the necessary funds, just how tough teams are finding it at the moment.

F1 is never easy, and it's not supposed to be. As McLaren's Ron Dennis once said: if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Lotus chief Boullier at Spa © XPB

Indeed, many teams have come and gone in Formula 1's history, and part of the attraction of the sport is that it's survival of the fittest. Those not good enough to do the job should have no automatic right to be on the grid.

But what's happening now is very different. It's not an uncompetitive squad that's finding it hard.

If a team as mighty as Enstone - the only outfit that's been able to give Red Bull a proper fight since the summer break - starts to have questions raised about its future, something is seriously, seriously wrong.

Team boss Eric Boullier tried as well as he could to keep a brave face on proceedings in Abu Dhabi, but even he couldn't hide the stress he was facing from a rebellious driver, difficult finances and ensuring Lotus has a future.

But he was wholly correct in pointing out that while it was Lotus's finances under scrutiny last weekend, his was not the only team struggling, for Sauber's problems earlier in the campaign had already been well documented.

"We have the highlight on us, but it's not only about us," he said. "I think most of the teams on the grid, if they don't have the shareholders committing financially to the team, the team is dead a long time. It is not only us.

"Everybody knows and everybody agrees that the cost is too high in F1. Unfortunately to be competitive you need to spend at least a minimum - even if the minimum today is at least 50 per cent less than the top teams.

"It's still a lot of money and it's still not sustainable. So we need to bring the costs down or bring the revenue up. We need to do something."

The view of some in the paddock is that teams like Lotus only have themselves to blame, and if they don't have the money they should close the purse strings.

Mercedes' Toto Wolff was pretty outspoken, insisting that a team has to take responsibility for its actions if it overspends.

"Of course it's not nice to hear a frontrunning team is not able to pay the bills, but for me it's how you manage your company," he said.

"Without wanting to be too hard - because I have no knowledge of how the team is being run - but you have the budget you have available and this is how any other normal company functions.

"Speaking too much that F1 is in bad shape, yes the whole world is in bad shape and we have to look at how we finance our operations. The same applies to us, you cannot overspend, it damages F1 and it's not good."

Toto Wolff © XPB

While his argument may have some merit, the reason the Lotus situation sets off so many alarm bells is because this is a frontrunning team, with top-level staff and high-quality drivers - a genuine contender for victories.

F1 has always been about competition. To get ahead of the opposition you have to spend. If you give up the quest to be better, then you are no longer a proper F1 team - it's an acceptance of defeat.

Stopping spending is a guarantee of a slide down the competitive order, which results in less revenue, and then the very real prospect of being forced out of business.

If you are a serious operation, then there's no other option but to keep spending, which is why teams have always had to be saved from themselves.

Lotus's level of success should be enough for it to be able to survive. A team battling for wins should not be pushed the brink. The system is broken if that's happening.

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, but F1 seems trapped now in that very cycle, with lots of talk of something needing to be done, but nobody doing anything about it.

In the weeks after Fuji 2008, it was Honda that pulled the plug and left what is now Wolff's Mercedes team on the brink of extinction. Just 12 months later, BMW and Toyota followed suit.

It was only amid that exodus that F1 got itself in order to try to map out a better future.

Now the warning signs have returned.

Hopefully the Lotus investment deal with Quantum Motorsports will be finalised this week and the team can breathe easy. But even if Enstone gets its house in order, who's next to hit trouble? And what if the deal falls over at the last minute? Then what?

When I asked Boullier in Abu Dhabi whether the most likely outcome in solving F1's problems was for revenue to go up, or costs to go down, he smiled...

"It's easy," he said. "Costs going up."

That sounds mad enough. But the real insanity is that nobody seems to want to do anything about the crisis that's coming.