@raymondu999--> Interesting. You imply that if a team has spent little money on the car then they can get a lot of car speed with an extra $1 million, but a big team might struggle to get any extra speed from an extra $1 million. Classic diminishing returns. But I think the same thing applies to driver speed. A backmarker team can probably get a big speed gain merely by going from a crappy pay driver with a monster budget (Charles Pic) to a slightly less-well funded but more skilled pay driver (Senna or Petrov). In contrast, at the front of the grid if you currently pay your best driver $15 million per year then it's not clear that you'll get a better driver in the long run by offering $20 million. I think diminishing returns applies to drivers, so backmarker teams actually get relatively big bang for the buck with drivers as well.
Yes all this theory is probably irrelevant and the teams are doing what they have to for survival. I'm glad they're still around.