F1 team owners continue to cry like babies

Flavio Briatore crying that the FIA cost caps may force him to cut his huge salary. Our heart bleeds.

(GMM) Flavio Briatore has backed FOTA chief Luca di Montezemolo's strong criticism of the rules changes unilaterally introduced this week by the FIA.

The Renault boss, a leading light of the F1 teams' alliance, critiqued the voluntary 33m euro budget cap for 2010 by arguing that all teams should have "the same rules".

"We need stability, the changes are a bit of a shock," the Italian told the BBC.

Briatore suggested that the changes, intending that privateers can have low budgets but remain competitive with the big-spending teams due to more technical freedoms, are overly simplistic.

"Formula one is very complicated, (sometimes) you try reducing the cost and instead of reducing it the cost goes up.

"This will need us to really sit together with the Federation to understand because the teams already did a big job to try and reduce the costs.

"The financial crisis makes everyone worried and we need formula one to be more efficient but sometimes we are not happy with the sentences that are imposed," said Briatore.