The budget cap is the story that won’t go away.
When teams aren’t being accused — or accusing other — of breaking it, they’re making a virtue about how hard they’re working to stay underneath it.
Ferrari is the latest team to admit that they’ve felt the squeeze of the hard financial ceiling — and team boss Mattia Binotto says it’s why the team has fallen behind Red Bull Racing.
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Without the freedom to splash the cash, the Italian team, historically the most profligate in the sport, has had to make some strategic accounting choices.
The proof of the value of those decisions will be in next year’s car. The cost payable today is that the second half of the season has been far from the thriller the early races led us to believe we were in for. Plus there’s the ongoing rumour in the Italian media that these uncompetitive later races might cost Binotto his job too.
Meanwhile, McLaren is focusing on what performance gains it can find from inside the cockpit in its preparations to field Oscar Piastri in the post-race test next week. The team has struck an agreement with Alpine to get him into orange overalls early, and with in-season testing as good as banned these days, every lap will count.
And while Mercedes’s uptick in form in the last month means one of Lewis Hamilton’s more obscure records is still alive, the team says it won’t be tilting the scales in his favour to try to launch him to victory.
FERRARI ADMITS TO BUDGET CAP SQUEEZE
Ferrari says it’s fallen behind Mercedes in the second half of the season because budget cap pressures have forced it to stop development.
The Italian team had the sport’s fastest car at most races before the mid-season break but has fallen behind dramatically since then.
Red Bull Racing has had the clear ascendancy since the resumption, and Mercedes has moved into second place in performance terms since the United States Grand Prix.
Team boss Mattia Binotto has previously pointed out that Maranello had stopped developing the car earlier in the year to focus on 2023, but this week he revealed his hand was forced by hitting the budget cap.
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“It was not a choice,” he said, per Autosport. “We simply finished the money for the budget cap.
“So simply we were at the cap. [There was] no more opportunity of developing the car, so we simply stick where we were.”
But Binotto said cost constraints wouldn’t curtail work on the 2023 machine, with the money saved by not producing new parts directed into the regular research program for the new car.
“Obviously we didn‘t compromise next year’s car development,” he said. “But certainly we decided to stop the current one, because on top of this normal development on the current [car] you will need to produce the parts to bring them on track, and that was the extra costs that we couldn’t afford.”
The extra 2023 development time will be particularly important for Ferrari, which reportedly hit a roadblock with its updates in the middle of the year.
Though the various car revisions added downforce, they narrowed the car’s set-up window considerably and have had the side-effect of exacerbating the SF-75’s already high tyre wear. The directive around floor stiffness at the Belgian Grand Prix also reportedly played into these problems.
Widening that set-up window by unpicking the deleterious parts of the updates will be key to the team getting back onto terms with Red Bull Racing next season.
McLAREN PREPARES PIASTRI FOR ‘VERY IMPORTANT’ POST-SEASON TEST
McLaren says it’s looking forward to getting Oscar Piastri into the 2022 car at the post-season test in Abu Dhabi to ensure he hits the ground running in 2023.
Piastri will be released from his Alpine contract after this Sunday’s grand prix to start his 2023 program with testing, which will run next Tuesday and Wednesday.
A by-product of his messy split with Alpine was that he never got the opportunity to drive a 2022-spec car in a free practice session, with those opportunities going to Jack Doohan instead.
McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl said a day of seat time at the end of the season would therefore be extremely valuable to get the relationship started on the right foot.
“Kilometres nowadays in Formula 1 cars for race drivers are quite limited with the regulations that are in place, especially when it comes to running the current car,” he said.
“Therefore it‘s obviously a very important test for us to get an initial read from Oscar’s side as well on our car and give him an initial feeling, which is then simply the starting point of making sure we get him ready for Bahrain next year.
“We have a good program in place. I think we have a lot of experience as well in getting young drivers ready for the first race in Formula 1. That‘s obviously the objective.
“We want to try as hard as we can together with Oscar [so] that the first race in Bahrain next year actually doesn‘t feel like it’s the first race for him in Formula 1.
“The young driver test is obviously an important starting point.”
Part of Piastri’s release agreement allowed him to partake in a private test in a 2021 car last week, but Seidl said it was of limited usefulness in preparing him for a full-time drive next season.
“To be honest, running an old car alone on a track, there is not too much to read into it,” he admitted. “In the end it was a good start from Oscar together with us, and that‘s pretty much it for the moment.”
MERCEDES WON’T PRIORITISE HAMILTON RECORD IN LAST RACE
Toto Wolff says Mercedes won’t consider favouring Lewis Hamilton in the final race of the season to keep the Briton’s unprecedented win record alive.
Hamilton has never gone a full season without a race win in his entire car racing career dating back to 2002. Every year of his Formula 1 tenure has delivered at least one victory, including his single-victory first season with Mercedes in 2013.
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Mercedes has been targeting a breakthrough win all season as validation for its toil with its difficult W13 car, but with the box checked via George Russell’s maiden triumph in Brazil, some have suggested the team will focus on extending Hamilton’s victory streak in Abu Dhabi.
Having been in contention at all three races since it applied its last update in Austin, the team is optimistic and can show competitively again this weekend, albeit without the dominance it enjoyed in Sao Paulo.
But team boss Wolff says Hamilton’s record won’t be considered a priority if the team finds itself in a strong position.
“I think Lewis doesn’t need any prioritisation, and it’s not what he ever would want,” he said, per Autosport. “I think that he mentioned before that this record of winning a race in every single season, that is less of a priority for him.
“It’s more that we’re getting the car back to where it can be and we’re racing for more race victories next year and hopefully a championship.”
Hamilton has previously rebuffed questions about whether he puts any importance on the unusual record, and speaking after finishing second to his teammate in Brazil, he said he was happier knowing that the team was overcoming its problems.
“This is really a dream for all the team,” he said. “I think everyone truly deserves this amazing result.
“To have had this drought and this period of time and to finally get back there, I think it‘s a wonderful achievement for everybody.”
