“It would send the completely wrong message”- Ferrari demands review of staff reduction deadline

“It would send the completely wrong message”- Ferrari demands review of staff reduction deadline imposed by FIA amidst new regulations.

With the new budget cap regulation proposed by Formula 1, in 2021 teams are allowed to spend till$145m per season, making big teams like Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull to do cost-cutting by removing staff or trading them to their other corporations.

Seeing the size of budget reductions, these teams are given time until June 2021 to complete their staff reduction and fall within the rules. However, Ferrari’s team principal seeing the magnitude of the situation wants the deadline to be reviewed.

As quoted by Motorsport-Total.com, since the “pandemic is not over yet,” Binotto feels it would send the “completely wrong” message to take people’s jobs away at this time. “The mechanism of six months must be reviewed,” he continued.

“We don’t think that would be the right approach. We are trying to move people [within the company] to the road cars because we are a massive company. We have some possibilities. But it’s a difficult task.”

Binotto feels that the deadline should be pushed till the end of the year, as the pandemic has already forced major recession across the globe, and this move surely could send a stressful signal to the staff working on nominal wages.

Red Bull already in the transition.

On the same topic, Red Bull’s team principal Christian Horner has claimed that their team is already accommodating the transition and shifting people to other projects.

“Inevitably, it will affect the shape of the team, but we have other activities as well. We have other synergy projects, and we have advanced technologies, which is growing in its activities,” he told Motorsport.com.

“People are our biggest asset and where possible, we will look to protect as many jobs as we possibly can.”

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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