Chandhok: Haas have shown a new team can enter and be competitive

Former Formula One driver turned pundit Karun Chandhok hopes that the $175million budget cap for 2021 onwards will help to entice new teams into the sport.

Having raced with Lotus and HRT in 2010 and 2011, Chandhok has first-hand knowledge of what it is like for a Formula One team to enter the sport from scratch. Along with Virgin Racing, both teams began their journey in the 2010 season after signing up with the promise of a budget cap being introduced.

However, the cap was never introduced and all three teams dropped out of the sport by the end of 2015, Virgin – then Marussia – the last to exit.

From 2021, a strict $175m budget cap will be in force and Chandhok thinks that now could be the right time for some independent teams to consider a Formula One campaign.

“First of all, we haven’t seen it come into effect,” Chandhok told GPFans. “So lets give things a chance. Obviously, they haven’t just plucked this number out of thin air. This number has been arrived at after a long period of meetings and negotiations amongst all the ten teams.

“It’s in F1’s interest to keep all ten teams happy.

“Through this process, they’ve arrived at this number and I think now we’ve just got to see how this works. Once we’ve seen two or three years of that working, then we can judge whether that [figure] needs to be adjusted up or down.”

Alongside the budget cap, new regulations designed to improve the racing and bunch the field together will give any teams considering an entry further cause to believe that they won’t find themselves stuck at the back of the pack.

“It’s just about money, it’s about the technical regulations as well,” continued Chandhok. “Were hopefully going towards a set of regulations where the raceability improves and therefore the show improves and therefore it’s better for sponsors and for people.

“They’re talking about standardising certain parts and they’ve obviously got the listed components that you can get, like Haas have done and Toro Rosso have done with the Red Bull technology. All of those things, and Haas is a good example of showing that a new team can arrive and can partner with key technical partners to make their program work and score points at least.

“The teams that came in 2010, I was involved with two of them, when they’re having to do everything from the ground up, that’s a completely different prospect.”

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