Against a background of much rancour over Formula 1 power units, and which manufacturer has identified what particular loophole in the phrasing of the rules, one thing all the teams agree on is that the cars on the grid in Abu Dhabi will look very different from those which are due to line up in Melbourne next week.
What’s rather less certain is the pace of that change process, since shipping costs now fall under the budget cap as well as the expense of developing new components in the first place. For that reason, teams are having to carefully stage-manage their upgrade plan so development components are introduced when logistically optimal.
And for those teams who outsource production, shipping costs aren’t the only expenses which have to be kept in line.
“Yeah, honestly, it’s the whole thing,” Alpine managing director Steve Nielsen said during the recent Bahrain test. “And even down to how expensive it is to ship the parts because that’s all in cap.
“Five years ago, you didn’t look at that, but these cardboard boxes that we all trip over in the morning when you come into the paddock, they cost money to get here, and a lot, and that’s all part of your spend. You can’t bring it to a race if it has to go in an aeroplane.
“That’s tens of thousands and you quickly burn through your money if you neglect that stuff.”
Team freight
Photo by: Lionel Ng / Motorsport Images
There are other means of transporting smaller components, of course. At the Chinese Grand Prix in 2013, for instance, this author happened to be staying in the same hotel as members of one team and hitched a ride with some of them in a minibus from the airport. They were carrying rather more luggage than one would expect to require for a couple of weeks on the road.
“New aero bits,” one of them said, cagily, by way of explanation.
Naturally there are limits to this strategy: you won’t get a new floor in a suitcase, no matter how well padded with socks and undergarments. The alternatives for larger items are sea freight or to go by road, both of which are slower, and restricted to European rounds in the latter case.
The demands of competition will inevitably complicate the picture. If a team is underperforming it might decide the potential improvement from bringing forward an update justifies the cost. But even this may incur unforeseen expense.
“It’s a balance,” said Nielsen. “If it’s 20 points of downforce, of course you’re going to fly it. If it’s minor, you’re not.
“So I don’t know whether other teams do that, but we’ve recently started looking at the whole spend: how we spend, do we make stuff in house or out?
“Even to the extent, when you use external people, and we do sometimes, they have peaks when they’re very busy and the price will be this much and they have troughs when they’re not so busy and the price is less. So even down to that, it all maximises your limited spend.”
Pierre Gasly, Alpine
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images
The cost cap was initially mooted in the late 2000s by then-FIA president Max Mosley, but the idea failed to take root at first. Competitors at the time were highly resistant to the concept, even in the face of global financial meltdown.
It took wiser heads, plus the existential threat of the COVID-19 pandemic to F1 itself, let alone the competitors, to secure an agreement. Set at $145million per year from 2021 with a glide path down to £135million from 2024 onwards (plus additional $1.8million per race for each grand prix weekend over a base number of 21), it has now been revised to $215million.
This accounts for inflation and changing exchange rates rather than being a net increase. And this year various boundaries have shifted, such as the allowance for sprints and additional races, plus several areas which were previously exempt from the cap – including transport costs – now falling within its remit.
“It means we will have to be clever to do a good usage of the budget that we have for development and to cope with this budget to introduce upgrades,” said Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur.
“For sure, the sooner the better and the most important the better. But it’s not a given that you start to introduce four or five upgrades the first couple of races.
“If you have to send a floor to Japan or to China, you are burning half of your development budget…”
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– The Autosport.com Team
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