Fry backs 'logical' budget cap idea

With FIA president Max Mosley informing teams earlier this month that he wants a budget cap introduced in F1 from the start of 2009, moves are now being made to work out how best it can be achieved.

And despite skepticism from former F1 team boss David Richards earlier this week about implementing a budget cap, Fry backs Mosley's belief that a cost cap is the right way for F1 to go.

"I do," Fry told autosport.com when asked if he thought it could be implemented. "It is the logical answer. History shows very, very clearly that all we have been doing up until now is moving money around into different departments.

"Once the engine department had the lion's share, then the aero department had the lion's share, and so on and so forth.

"But the general trend of everyone's budget is upwards, because the amount of money we are prepared to spend was dependent on the value of winning. It has nothing to do with the engineering regulations.

"We have to get into a situation where we have control. And the only logical and satisfying way of doing it from our point of view, and we believe the other teams and Max share the view, is to cap everyone's budget.

"And then you add an extra dimension. It is not just engineers engineering for performance and timing, of having to make the first race of the year with your product, it is performance, timing and how efficiently you do it.

"I think that will be a bigger intellectual challenge and it will take some getting used to. But it will be better for F1 in the long run."

Financial representatives of all the teams are due to meet with FIA technical advisor Tony Purnell in Paris tomorrow for preliminary discussions about framing regulations for a budget cap in F1.

Although there remain many unanswered questions about how the budget cap will be implemented in F1, Mosley has revealed that a special 'finance commission' will be created to ensure teams' compliance.

"The experience with McLaren and the Ferrari thing last season, is that if you deploy the resources and get sufficient expertise you can find almost anything," said Mosley.

"The chance of someone doing work that we couldn't find traces of, like with (secret) suppliers, is very, very slim. So we think it can be done, but we are at the early stages.

"There is a meeting on Thursday with the finance people from the teams to talk about the generalities, and then we will start looking with experts and the teams at what could go wrong.

"We hope then to know enough to produce a rule by June. We may run into problems that nobody can foresee, but most of the accountants we talk to say it must be possible."