FIA President Jean Todt "has blasted cost-cutting proposals" put forward by F1's biggest teams as a "joke," according to Jonathan Noble of AUTOSPORT. Ahead of a "big push by Todt to try to implement much-needed cost controls in F1, with spending having accelerated at the front of the grid, he has asked the sport's smaller outfits to come up with suggestions." That is because he is "hugely unimpressed with a three-year plan that has been proposed by leading teams, which includes a tyre warmer ban, the return of active suspension and more standard parts." Todt: "What was proposed? It was a joke" (AUTOSPORT, 5/17). ESPN reported while the bigger teams "are in favour of a slow cut back in spending, Todt is convinced F1 needs to embrace a much larger spending cut to ensure the survival of its smallest teams." Todt: "My advice was make a contribution as to how we reduce the costs. We know they have budgets of between $100 and $400 million, and the proposal they seem happy with is to reduce by $2 million, which is ridiculous. When we speak about costs we are talking about reducing them by 30-40 percent, and then we can feel comfortable" (ESPN, 5/12). FOX SPORTS' William Dale wrote the colors and the names might be different, but the result of F1’s biggest and most expensive rule changes in recent history "have led to the exact same outcome." Boredom, as one team "romps to dominant win, after dominant win, after dominant win." But instead of Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull making our Sunday nights miserable, it was Mercedes "who turned the Spanish Grand Prix into an exhibition race" (FOX SPORTS, 5/12).
