After an exhausting GP in Emilia Romagna for Mercedes, one of team boss Toto Wolff’s greatest frustrations was the possible consequences of Valtteri Bottas’ serious accident.
It wasn’t the lost points that he worried about as Bottas had a tough race to look back on before being harpooned by Williams by George Russell trying to overtake the Finn, but the potential impact on the future development program for the W12 triggered by the cost of the damage. After dismantling the wreck at Brackley, the team estimated that the final bill will be around £ 1 million.
It’s an extraordinary notion that the mighty Mercedes should fret about paying for defective parts – engineering chief Andrew Shovlin even highlighted the front wing that Lewis Hamilton poked into the tires – but the episode shows how the top is under pressure -Teams in this new era are available to the FIA financial regulations.
Requests to spend less than $ 145 million on the development, construction and operation of their cars in 2021 has resulted in significant changes for Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari, the top three financiers. Everyone had to cut staff, transfer employees to other projects and thoroughly rethink their processes. If you spend too much, you will be punished like any other form of rule-breaking.
“We had to go through the pain of layoffs over the winter,” says Red Bull’s Christian Horner. “We had to resize, repackage, and it’s really difficult to say goodbye to members of the team, some of whom have been since 25 Years are represented in different formats.
“It was really a difficult exercise and it continues to be a huge challenge, especially for the larger teams. It increases the efficiency of the business because it has to be very simple. “
A large element of this cost saving is the fact that fewer parts are made and used during the season. Whenever possible, the components have been redesigned so that they last longer and complete more racing weekends. In fact, Mercedes quietly put more steel, and therefore less carbon, into the W12’s suspension for cost reasons – the change added some weight, but it gives the parts a longer life.
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W12, changes his front wing
Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images
The team also repurposed its W11 chassis as the W12 chassis instead of building a slew of new examples – for the record, Bottas’ badly damaged car was Chassis 05.
PLUS: Why Russell was right after meeting Imola F1 to be wrong about Bottas
More than ever before, new aero parts in CFD and wind tunnel need to earn their place on the car before going to manufacture, and there is greater focus on controlling production. It doesn’t make sense to have half a dozen outdated Bahrain spec front wings when a new version hits the market a few races later. However, if you lose a pair in a day, as Mercedes did at Imola, you may have to build unplanned add-ons of the current version to ensure there are enough spare parts in stock.
All of this reflects how smaller and smaller teams were run because they simply didn’t have enough cash flow. As recently as three or four years ago, a fighting Force India – now re-owned as Aston Martin – had to justify the cost of each screw. However, it’s a new experience for teams that traditionally could reasonably spend what they had to spend.
It also explains why qualifying sprint negotiations between the teams, F1 and FIA dragged on for so long before solidifying earlier this month. Three additional races, which by definition have a high risk of contact if the drivers try to get the most out of the new format, offered the prospect of additional costs.
“We’re really struggling to get below the budget cap and we’re talking tens of thousands of pounds, not hundreds of thousands,” Wolff said in Bahrain before an agreement on sprints was reached.
“That’s why we really want to support Stefano [Domenicali] and Ross [Brawn] with the idea because I think it’s worth trying.
“But we just don’t have the margin to try and then find out there’s an extra £ half a million or more that we need to find within that budget cap because that could mean looking at people again, And that’s not where I even wanna go anymore “
Toto Wolff, Team Principal and CEO of Mercedes AMG
Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images
Horner added, “We support this in the hope that if it works it will generate future revenue, future interest and future benefit for the sport.
“If you divide $ 145 million through 23 events, you are gross [seeing] What it takes to run a Grand Prix car, and of course to add effectively, although a shortened race only costs more than we obviously need to use parts.
“There just needs to be a reasonable allowance that takes this into account because as Toto says we are currently looking for savings of £ 10,000, £ 20,000 and £ 30,000 to make sure we hit the cap. And suddenly having such a variable is something that just needs to be taken into account. We would like to support it, but there must be accommodation. “
That has now been achieved and the teams have been promised additional income from the sprint races. There is also some kind of insurance policy that will help them pay for accidental damage.
The costs of accidents at any other point in the season must still be borne by the teams for which an emergency is included in the budget. But this in F1, and everything is taken to the very extreme so that the wobble space is as tight as possible. Teams often end a season after losing a wing or two, but without a crash on the order of Bottas last weekend, forcing them to ditch parts that were intended for more than two races.
“Our drivers have been incredibly good at getting through the season without breaking much over the past few years,” said Shovlin on Sunday evening. “And for sure, the bill will be huge in terms of carbon and metalwork.
“So we’re going to look at what we can actually save and get the cars back together for Portimao. But it’s pretty worrying when you have incidents like this.
Marshals clear Valtteri Bottas’ damaged Mercedes W12 car from the gravel trap
Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images
“If you have a number of such major accidents that cause significant damage and that was bad for us because we also had a front wing with Lewis, then that will definitely exceed our allocation for what we have available to for the.” Output parts.
“In an ideal world, you bring it to life, you don’t break it. All you break is hopefully the end of your life or something that will soon be out of date, but that’s definitely not the case here. It’s really a cost cap factor, and the money has to come from somewhere. If it becomes a major problem, it can ultimately drain your development budget. So we have to be aware of what happens next.
“We are very overwhelmed with the cost cap. And what we have always feared is a total depreciation of a car. Now this isn’t going to be a total write-off, but almost, and that’s not something we really wanted. “
The first signs from the detailed inspection carried out by Mercedes are that the chassis can be put back into operation at some point, while the engine – not part of the cost cap, but important with regard to future network penalties – has also survived. Much more was grouped together, however, and items intended for later use were removed from the shelves in stores.
Currently, Mercedes does not have to change its development plan immediately. It’s a moving target anyway as the team doesn’t know how the battle with Red Bull will play out or how long it will take for upgrades to be made. The ongoing 2022 project will inevitably require more and more attention.
What caused the crash is incorporated into the above contingency, which was taken into account when the team was planning. Another major crash over the course of the longest F1 season ever could result in a real squeeze by the end of the year.
Another complication is that the cap allows for a full season of 23 races. There is a reasonable chance some will be left by the wayside in the coming months due to the pandemic, and the cap will again be cut to reflect this – but only if events are canceled with an appropriate warning and the teams have not yet made any expenditures Cash directly related to them. Lost races also mean lower income for F1 and therefore for the teams.
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB16B, Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W12
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
The most painful prospect for the teams is that the cap will drop to $ 140 million next year, in the first season with the new regulations, and to $ 135 million in 2023. Until then, everyone like McLaren, Alpine and Aston Martin will be pushing hard against it.
As a result, teams are getting more and more nervous about the cost of crash damage. While in the past a large shunt in qualifying caused observers to speculate about fines or a pit start after changing the chassis, there will now also be financial consequences.
It is also worth considering how cost considerations can affect future driver decisions. Given the limitations, will a top team now take the risk of hiring a rookie or even someone in their second season who is still on a steep learning curve and struggling to impress?
The cost cap added an intriguing element to F1 that was thoroughly necessary – without it, there was a good chance we wouldn’t have 20 cars on the grid in the years to come. And as Wolff’s frustration makes clear, he’s already on the top teams and closing the bars.
It also adds an extra edge to the relentless struggle between teams. F1 used to be a downright spending war, but now it’s about who can use their money efficiently. And who is smart enough to submit a final 2021 bill to the FIA that is as close as possible to $ 144,999,999?
Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes
Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images
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