The FIA has said that Ferrari will not be granted a similar exemption to the cost cap exemption granted to Audi.
The cost cap in Formula One will increase from $135m (£108.1m) to $215m (£172.2m) from 2026, taking into account new technical regulations and global inflation. However, the team will be given an additional increase due to the higher cost of living in Switzerland, where Audi will be based at the Sauber factory in Hinwil. This has drawn criticism from the other nine teams.
This raises the question of whether Ferrari, another team based outside the UK, will also be granted a similar exemption. However, the FIA’s single-seater series director Nikolas Tombazis has said that Ferrari will not be granted a similar exemption.
“The situation influencing the salaries between teams is a bit more complex because you have to take into consideration the difficulty in obtaining people from other teams because of what you have to pay them,” he told.
“We believe it is correct to focus on the higher-labour cost countries, which at the moment, would be Switzerland.
“I will say that in democracy, where there’s nine wolves and one sheep, I think you can see who would be the nine wolves.
“We do want to have, of course, consensus and democracy but it is our responsibility to also try to be fair, and when we have opportunities every five or six years to make adjustments that aim for fairness, maybe within the competition of Formula 1, it’s difficult to get the necessary levels of majorities amongst teams to support us.
“We see our responsibility to be fair, which is what we always try to do.”
