Ecclestone: Engineers to Blame for Escalating Costs

Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone has blamed the sport's escalating costs on engineers and claimed that the team bosses have lost control of their budgets as they are forced to spend their way to success.

Top teams have budgets in excess of £100 million and have continually refused to hold back on their spending as the prize of being at the front end of the grid grows ever greater.

With decreasing sponsorship opportunities, many of the best financed backers have chosen to side with a small logo on a front-running team and that has left the back-of-the-grid outfits struggling for scraps.

That has allowed the desire for success to over-ride sensible business policies and Ecclestone said: "The problem is that the team bosses have lost control. It is the engineers and in some cases the drivers who run the teams.

"If the team principals stop them playing with their hobby, which is each of them trying to prove to their counterparts in other teams that they are the best, the top people will leave for another team which will support their desire to be the best."

Ecclestone, who was himself been hit by the crumbling popularity of the sport when he was forced to shut down his digital television operation last year, was present at Wednesday's meeting at Heathrow in which many radical changes were imposed upon the teams.

"We must change the regulations in a way that stops engineers being able to spend unnecessary money which does not in any way relate to improving the Drivers' World Championship, the sport or our duty to entertain," he told the Guardian newspaper.

"We have 300 million people who want our sport on TV and who really don't care about electronics or how many cylinders the engines have. Teams have reached a peak of income for the moment. They must now reduce costs."