Tost feels powerless: "Don't you see there's no vaccine for coronavirus yet?"

Franz Tost feels powerless against the coronavirus and it gnaws at him. The 64-year-old chief of AlphaTauri doesn't understand that there is no vaccine yet and tells him to fear many bankruptcies if the economy doesn't get back on its feet soon. Moreover, he discusses the budget ceiling in Formula 1.

"The powerlessness upsets me, and as a result, the uncertainty. When will it end?," says Tost in conversation with Motorsport-Total.com. With the German medium, the Austrian says he doesn't understand why no vaccine has been found yet. "I still don't understand why medicine and the pharmaceutical industry haven't found a poison."

Especially from an economic point of view, all measures need to be relaxed in the short term. "Otherwise we will see a lot of bankruptcies, and then it will take forever before the economy recovers," says Tost.

One of the measures taken by Formula 1 is to postpone the new regulations for the 2021 cars to 2022. According to Tost, this should ensure that the development of the new cars falls below the budget ceiling, thus reducing the gap between the top teams and the midfield. Moreover, another reason is that all teams now simply don't have enough budget to work on the new cars. But what control mechanisms does the FIA have at its disposal? "Financial experts will control the teams", is the short answer from the team boss.

Discussion on budget ceiling still ongoing

Discussions on the budget ceiling will also be discussed. Originally there was an agreement that the maximum amount would be $175 million per year per season, but due to the coronavirus, the call is getting bigger and bigger to reduce this amount even further. Red Bull Racing and Ferrari, however, are said to be against it. "There's still talk of this. It is still too early to set an upper limit at the moment, as long as we don't know the amount of income, which again depends on the number of races we drive. We can only spend as much money as we earn."