Claims F1 cost cap can't be enforced are "nonsense"

A budget cap for F1 entrants is believed to be on the agenda of the championship's incoming new owner Liberty Media, but the company is likely to face an uphill task of convincing F1's biggest teams to go ahead with the measure.

Previous plans to cap budgets in F1 were resisted by the teams and eventually fell through - and, in response to this newest development, Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne stated he did not believe spending limits could work for Formula 1.

"Despite all these interventions by the FIA to try and limit spending, they [the teams] have found other ways to spend," Marchionne said.

Tost, however, insists F1's top teams are being disingenuous when they say costs are impossible to police.

"Give each team, for example, 150 million Euros with the FIA watching over it," Tost told Austria's Tiroler Tageszeitung.

"The big teams will cry foul that there is no way to control costs but this is nonsense. Over at Toro Rosso, I know how much each screw costs.

"Many claim you cannot control development - nonsense as well. If somebody shouldn't want to present their expenditures, it could be pretty easy: then the FIA could charge this team twice the average price of the part in question.

"And then you'll see how fast all invoices would be filed with the FIA."

Tost reckons that even manufacturer entries will soon come around to the idea that F1 budgets are too high.

"We need to reduce the costs. It shouldn't be that a team spends 450 million Euros a year. On the other hand, we bargain for a few cents when it comes to road cars.

"Even the manufacturers cannot accept sums like this forever. It's not feasible. We spent way too much money on F1."

Additional reporting by Stefan Ehlen