Budget cap means fewer updates during the season in F1 2022

Last season, most F1 teams stopped any development phase for their 2021 cars early in order to stay ahead of this year’s completely new technical regulations.

While 2021 was an outlier in this regard, Mekies believes the sport’s budget cap will still limit developments in the season compared to pre-2020 levels, given the financial constraints put in place to make F1 more sustainable will reduce the number of updates teams can afford to pump out.

“Not compared to this year because this year was obviously close to zero, or at least it was very little for us, but when you look back on 2019, 2018 we think you will see less,” Mekies said.

“In 2018, 2019 in the big teams, every race on the car or every other race had something.

“From our point of view, with the limitations we have, it sounds difficult to have a high number of updates.”

The upper cost limit, which this year is based on a base value of 140 million euros.

This luxury problem particularly affects the large editions Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari, teams that have already had to radically downsize their teams in order to meet the budget cap.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari SF21

Photo by: Ferrari

“You have to stick to a budget for development over the course of the year because you keep learning and therefore need adjustment options. That was the biggest challenge, ”explained Mekies, whose Ferrari team took third place in the 2021 constructors’ championship.

“As soon as you have defined this area, you have it for aero development, you have it for mechanical development, then it goes to every department and Aero says, ‘Okay, I can do two or three developments with that,’ and then plan New all of your plans to feed that.

“That is exactly what we are doing now. How big the challenge is depends on your competitiveness against the others.”

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However, Mekies warns that if testing before the 2022 season reveals several issues with the new cars that need to be fixed quickly, fixing those issues could mean the teams get into their development pot earlier than planned and get some updates for the Have to sacrifice season.

“If you have a big problem early in the year and nothing correlates etc, then part of your package could put two or three bucks in,” added Mekies. “You have to fix it now anyway, so you take your parts, toss them in the bin, and this is how you will handle them.”