Cold Ecclestone pull the plug on the teams money?

Too bad nobody knows the numbers, of how much a race truly costs in rights' fees, how much they make in advertising and seat/suite sales, how much the teams are paid to show up... how they could be a Billion in debt is beyond me.

I keep tellin' ya, they gotta go back to their early 70's roots and start over. Nobody needs a wind tunnel to put on a good race, and they have all the computer krap they need so they don't need to spend more there, and they surely don't need 800 employees. 25 ought to be enough...

 

A race today costs about 30 million dollars to the organizer. Older races are 10 to 20 million. So lets take 15 as an average time 17 races gives roughly a quarter billion. But that is only part of the pie as you have to add TV revenues and other income (e.g. milking local stands).

Teams budgets are known as well, ranging from from about 100 million to 600 depending a bit on how you account.

Teams aren't shown for showing up at one race, but for one entire season. You can skip a race if you have a darn good excuse or you will loose it all.

We also know that Ferrari would have been paid 80 million more had they won the title last year. That gives you a measuring stick on what the teams get. My guesstimate would be a billion in the pool redistributed to 10 teams. Not everybody gets the same, it is all based on points.

My feeling is a top team gets 100 millions back from Bernie whereas back markers might get just 30 millions.

 

Which is probably why they are the back markers in the first place. Not even Red Bull could overcome this - check with Paul Stoddart on how much fun it was to run perpetual backmarker Minardi.

 

Actually I would use Red Bull to make exactly the opposite case:

They're running with all the money you could wish for, yet are beaten by their poor little brother team Toro Rosso. Something we have already seen with Superbest friends vs mighty Honda.

It is not just the money (which is important), but also how you use it.

And you can't really compare Stoddart to the rest of F1: He put so little money into it, that it was just no way it could have worked.