[Canada ALMS fan]

Originally Posted by Dutton

Suppose Ferrari go for the cap.

They then pay each driver x-millions per year "extra", and then each driver, entirely coincidentally, decides to use x-millions of their personal funds each year to purchase/lease goods/services for/from Ferrari.

I would be interested to see the mechanisms which would be able to demonstrate such spending being the team spending team money on areas within the budget cap realm.

That said, IIRC, driver salaries become included in the cap 2011 onwards.

I still think, though, post-2010, you could end up with the same thing with respect to hospitality: Ferrari provide FIAT with hospitality which ends up being like 300-million, which involves, I dunno, raffles and stuff which give FIAT money (not fixed, per say, it is just with massively generous prizes and only available to the FIAT hospitality set-up). FIAT use money to purchase/lease goods/services for/from Ferrari, which just happens to be similar in amount to that which they win in their F1 hospitality raffles (entirely coincidental, of course).

Sponsors don't pay the team for space on the car anymore: the sponsors purchase/lease goods/services for/from Ferrari. Ferrari isn't actually spending Ferrari's money on areas controlled by the cap.

I don't intended these examples to be taken in an utterly literal sense, but rather just the issue. Definitions of what constitutes team spending could get tricky: the circumvention of regulations could be absolutely as blatant as can be, but the matter of actually PROVING something ain't so easy.

I have long been of the opinion that budget caps in F1 would prove a nightmare to enforce. I guess we are going to find out

You nailed it Dutton. They legalized traction control because they couldn't poilce it and that was software that was IN the car. How are they going to police spending of teams that have hundreds of employees, multiple partners, and have many transactions/deals that no money changes hands but have value? Race team accounting is foggy at the best of times for tax purposes, what makes the FIA think they'll be any better at deciphering? I hope the spending controversies that will arise from this don't distract from the action on the track.