Abiteboul: Redundancy plans could be major distraction for top teams

Renault F1 team believes the distraction of Formula 1's top teams needing to make redundancies with the new budget cap comes around, and it could prove a help for the 'smaller' teams.

Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull are virtual light years ahead of everyone with more resources. But Renault F1 managing director Cyril Abiteboul believes cost restrictions coming for the 2021 season could change the situation.

Abiteboul accepts that Renault's budget is not enough to help it reach the top three in the short-term; but the difficulties that will come with the budget-cap could leave the trio with a "major" headache.

"We know we have a huge deficit in resources against the teams that ultimately we want to fight against," Abiteboul told Motorsport.com. "But we also know that things like the budget cap at some point will kick in.

"It makes no sense to stack up resources knowing that we will have to reduce and go down. In a certain respect it will be most unprofessional to do that, to hire people that we may have to lose in the future.

"We are exactly at the tipping point of where F1 expects manufacturer teams to be, so we need to accept to stand still. So I would say that our disadvantage will be the resources that we have in the next two years.

"But our advantage is that we will not have the distraction of having to think about the future. We can focus on going racing, and not having to think about a redundancy plan that will be a major distraction, let's face it, for the management of teams that are much larger than us.

"These are pros and cons, I am not moaning, we have a plan and we will executive it."