The trouble with budget caps is that they’re hard to enforce – for instance the new rules require engine mfrs to supply teams at a certain price, so McLaren but their merc engines for say £15M a year along with Force India and Honda/Virgin. But Merc are part owners of McLaren and so invest a further £x a year into engine development – the money is part of Mercedes’ overall budget and the work need not go on at their HPE plant so could be hidden from the FIA – how does that money get factored into a team’s budget?
Then take the same example and pick a million and one other components, plus fuels, lubricants etc and all of the associated subcontractors. Yes it’s easy to go through one team’s accounts and see what they’ve spent, but how would they know what’s actually being spent in the big picture? The inequalities could and would still remain.
