No simple alternatives to grid penalties - Todt

FIA president Jean Todt has insisted that there are no simple alternatives to issuing grid penalties to teams who overuse engine parts, and claimed that if monetary fines were introduced instead then this would be no problem for the bigger teams with larger budgets.

The FIA has put a huge emphasis on cost-cutting in recent years, and limited the amount of engines for a team to three per season, much to the annoyance of the larger teams.

“[In the past] you could change one engine from Friday, you could change the engine for the Saturday, then you have a qualifying engine, and you could do that 20 times,” said Todt in Abu Dhabi.

“It was decided for cost reasons to limit the number of engines. It was also to make access to engine supply to private teams at a lower cost.”

“So, what happens if you change the engine? Something has to happen. I would say it has been a consensus by everybody that it should be through a grid penalty, so that’s what it is.”

“I don’t feel that it’s easy to find the real solution. If you don’t do anything, then what happens? It will be more expensive to buy the engines.

“Even for the FIA to decide that you don’t have any limited amount of engines, it doesn’t make any problem, but it will make a problem for the competitors, so you have to translate that with grid penalties.”

Todt went on to claim that, in an ideal world, there would be no grid penalties at all, but insisted they were a necessary regulation to stop the overuse of engines.

“The idea [is] that it will be cheaper for the private teams, because the private teams don’t pay four engines, they pay three engines.

“That was a consideration, because if you remember, [2018] will be the drop – since the implementation of the agreement, each year is a drop on the cost of the engine. To achieve that, the engine suppliers said ‘we are prepared to reduce the cost of the engine to the teams, but we need to decrease the number of engines we will supply to them, from four to three’.

“We have the tendency to forget the origin of a decision. It’s what I was mentioning about [grid] penalties. Of course, we would prefer not to have any penalties, but there is a cost if you don’t have anymore penalties. The reason why we went on three engines was to allow to bill cheaper the engine to the private team, which for me was absolutely essential.”

Monetary penalties instead of grid penalties are an option, but Todt says that it would not be a problem for larger teams to take the hit.

“It will be encouraging the wealthy teams,” he continued. “Does Mercedes care to get [a fine of] 200,000 or 500,000?

“Then what will people say? [That] the FIA wants to try to find any way to find more money.”