Creative investing, though, may be the only way for low-budget teams to win in the post-"Moneyball" era.
Instead of just one or two low-budget teams fighting for a playoff spot, a handful of them are.
Bruno Senna, 26, is a rookie driver at the Hispania team, one of three new low-budget teams to enter the series this year.
Next year, with the reduced hit to the budget, teams might be more willing to take a chance on a younger, perhaps less experienced players.
But given all the small-budget teams struggling to hold onto talent, that still led to plenty of big names making it to free agency most years.
The IndyCar Series will use a Dallara chassis for the 2012 season in a move it hopes will help small-budget teams and generate some excitement for open-wheel racing.
An attendant dependence on securing points from set-pieces rather than open play contrasted unfavourably with the much more fluid, inventive football practised by lower-budget teams such as Swansea City, West Bromwich Albion, and Norwich City.
Unfortunately for the team, however, the result was that Formula One ended up with three new low-budget teams in a series that was primarily the same as it had always been: The winners had budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars, the others had a fraction of that money, and the technical rules were the same for all.
In the days of Arab sheikhs, Russian oligarchs and American business tycoons, low-budget teams like Atletico simply aren't supposed to do this well.
"This team will be the lowest-budget team in Formula One.
