Home

F1

Schumacher Advises Williams to Stop Developing F1 Cars

Published 04/30/2020, 7:28 AM EDT

Follow Us

Former F1 driver Ralf Schumacher believes the current financial crisis may result in Williams and Haas leaving the sport. As all the teams continue to squabble over the sport’s finances, Haas and Williams are hanging on by a thread. Schumacher advised Williams to consider Christian Horner’s proposition of customer cars to save the team from crumbling.

Would Williams consider Horner’s idea?

The lack of racing due to COVID-19 has created a financial crunch for F1 teams. No races equal no payments from sponsors, which creates a major headache, especially for the smaller teams. To mitigate a part of the crisis, teams are proposing a reduced budget cap for 2021. Smaller teams want a lower cap at the $125M mark or lower. However, the bigger teams are against the change, resulting in a stalemate.

ADVERTISEMENT

Article continues below this ad

But F1 cannot afford to extend the financial debate any longer as it could have permanent consequences on the smaller teams. Teams such as Williams and Haas are barely sticking on in F1. Further delays or bad decisions could force the teams to walk away for good.

Trending

Get instantly notified of the hottest F1 stories via Google! Click on Follow Us and Tap the Blue Star.

Follow Us

via Imago

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner suggested the idea of supplying teams with “customer cars” to reduce their financial woes. As per Horner’s plan, the bigger teams would give customer teams a year-old car that is fully developed. It would immensely reduce R&D costs but wouldn’t necessarily help teams achieve parity with the top 3.

ADVERTISEMENT

Article continues below this ad

However, Ralf Schumacher feels a “customer car” is Williams’ best option to survive in F1. Speaking to Bild, Schumacher said:
“A brilliant idea,” 

“A team like Williams would be a lot further ahead if they just bought a Red Bull instead of trying to build their own car.  It would also cost them less money.”

“If the season doesn’t start, I don’t know how Williams can survive.  Or Haas, who as Americans tend to work according to the ‘hire and fire’ principle”.

ADVERTISEMENT

Article continues below this ad

“So it may well be that in the crisis they say they will leave Formula 1.  By the way, I don’t just see problems for the small teams,” 

Without a doubt, the W10 would be much faster than the Williams FW43. But it is unlikely for smaller teams to take such an extreme step unless things go really bad.

SHARE THIS ARTICLE :

Written by:

Abhishek Bharadwaj

720Articles

One take at a time

Abhishek Bharadwaj is an F1 author and content strategist at EssentiallySports. Having joined ES in January 2020, he has over 700 articles to his name. While he was first introduced to the world of F1 in 2006, he started religiously following the sport in 2012 and has had an undying passion for it ever since.
Show More>