Last season, most Formula 1 teams chose to put aside the development of their car to try to get ahead of the new regulations that will radically change the aerodynamics of cars.
Although 2021 was an exception, Ferrari’s sporting director, Laurent Mekies , believes that the budget cap will continue to be an obstacle to developing the cars during 2022. The financial restrictions that the Grand Circus has imposed are aimed at creating a sustainable category and much more even, but they will also mean that the teams cannot update their cars as often.
“Not like this year (2021), because it has been almost zero, or at least for us,” Mekies said of the development of the cars. “But if you look at 2019 or 2018, I think we will see less. In those seasons, the big teams had something new every race, or every two.
“It seems difficult from our point of view to have a large number of updates with the limits that exist,” explained the manager of the Italians.
This budget ceiling, which has been reduced to 140 million dollars (about 120 million euros) for this 2022 -excluding some elements, such as the salary of pilots or senior officials-, that means that the largest structures will have to choose very well what area to spend your development money on.
This problem especially affects Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari, teams that have had to drastically reduce their workforce to adapt to the budget limit.
“You need to keep some marks to develop during the season, because you will learn more and more, and you will have to find ways to adjust it. That has been the biggest challenge,” Mekies said after watching Ferrari finish third in the constructors’ championship.
“Once you’ve defined it, that’s what you have to develop the aerodynamics and the mechanics, so each department will say, ‘Okay, with that, I’ll be able to do these two or three updates,’ and then you’ll schedule all your plans to be comply”.
“That’s what we do now. The difficulty is that it depends on the level of competitiveness with respect to the others,” said the Ferrari insider. But Mekies warns that if in pre-season testing in 2022 they discover serious problems with their car that need to be fixed quickly, it could put the whole year’s development on hold and they would have to sacrifice some planned upgrades.
“If you have a big hiccup early in the season and it doesn’t correlate with everything else, you can put some of your money into two or three upgrades. You need to fix it somehow, so you take the parts, throw it away, and That’s how you’ll fix it.”
