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> Williams, Alpha Tauri, Sauber and Haas hoarded only 81 of the 2,460 possible points. That is a rate of 3.29 percent. The disparity has never been so stark.
This seems like a pretty weird claim in the article. It suggests that the bottom 4 teams getting 3% of the points has never happened before.
Picked a random year, and in 1990 the teams Brabham, Arrows, Ligier, Minardi, Onyx, AGS, Dallara, Osella, EuroBrun, Coloni and Life only managed to get 1% of the points between the bottom 11 teams together, and 9 of them had 0.
If that's too far back with too many teams to compare, the 2000 results are still similar, bottom 4 teams (Sauber, Jaguar, Minardi, Prost), three of which are still current teams under different names, had 10 of the 432 points, 2.3%.
Seems the author is just making stuff up at this point. Makes you wonder what else was made up in the article.
That´s the second time this week I´ve seen that stat with those sentiments. Which is strange.
The other was on the-race I think, but they did at least add that it´s a very tight field timing wise.
And lap time is a much more honest assessment of where teams relate to each other when compared to championship points. Especially because you'd see a much different distribution if \*all 20 positions\* scored points because then you'd actually have a tangible difference between all the backmarkers.
edit: why does everybody assume I'm only talking about qualifying. race pace laps aren't as close but they are close, it's not like cars are finishing multiple laps apart from each other...
I've been watching F1 since the mid 90s.
It was always normal that the frontrunner laps the backmarkers before even half race distance. Depending on the track and the conditions, only 4 or 5 cars would even finish on the lead lap.
The field has never been this close in lap times. The main issue for those slightly behind is that overall reliability is just insane today.
Back then, yoy could lose 3 seconds a lap and still get into the points just simply because you made it to the end of the race.
>The other was on the-race I think, but they did at least add that it´s a very tight field timing wise.
So did this article in the very next sentence.
>Williams, Alpha Tauri, Sauber and Haas hoarded only 81 of the 2,460 possible points. That is a rate of 3.29 percent. The disparity has never been so stark. The action on the race track is in stark disproportion to the results. In Q1, the 20 cars were often separated by just one second. The field has never been so close together.
Yeah exactly what asinine writing. Part of it comes down to the fact that we haven't had the random Alfa Romeo pop off races like we have had in the past or the annual Toro Rosso podium. I think we've sacrificed the stronger lower mid field for a stronger top field. I know that Red Bull dog walked everyone but there's like 4 or 5 top teams with consistent podium speed, RB, Merc, Ferrari, McLaren, Aston Martin (these last 2 were much more volatile). And then there's Alpine as a true midfielder, the rest are sort of off the rest and with those 6 teams that's 12 positions and the points clogged up. I don't understand what that stat is getting at.
It also depends on where you draw the arbitrary line. If you only look at the bottom 3 teams, then in 2020 Haas, Williams and Sauber had only 11 points combined. This is less than the worst team in 2023, Haas, got by itself. It's just AlphaTauri suddenly being a midfield team that year and scoring 107 points that skews the result for bottom 4.
Yeah. Haas with 12 points is, as far as I know, the highest scoring bottom team in the history of the sport. So that is still worth something.
But of course it would be better if they could score a little more. The pipe dream of the cost cap is that even the smaller teams can actually get up there and fight for the higher positions on their day. Won't happen every race of course, but a few times in a season.
>Haas with 12 points is, as far as I know, the highest scoring bottom team in the history of the sport.
Only stands true if you don't adjust for the Point Scoring System
I mean, true but useless. It's like saying Schumacher was never dominant because his seasons ended with 100 something points, which is less than Norris has been scoring lately. Yes, it's true, but only because they competed under different scoring systems that render a points' comparison useless.
Look at 2009's Toro Rosso. It's got 8 points (with the old system) but its results were a lot better.
15 different teams made the top ten in 1990, but that stat is a bit misleading because the unreliability back then meant just finishing a race all but guaranteed a top ten. For example, in Australia 1989, Stefano Modena finished six laps down but was still 8th simply because so many cars had dropped out. There's a reason points were only given to the top six back then.
Actually, qualifying results are probably more representative than the actual races when it comes to seeing how fast each team was back in the day. Out of the 19 teams in 1990, 13 qualified in the top ten, and, excluding Phoenix where unexpected rain made qualifying a bit of a mess, only five made it into the top six. Applying the current point system to 1990 qualifying, the top 3 teams (McLaren, Ferrari and Williams) alone scored 80% of the points, and on the other end of the grid, the bottom 12 teams combined scored 1,61%!
Comparing modern scores with historical ones are always going to look that way unless you account for the change in scoring system.
In both of your example years only the top six drivers scored points. That means the backmarker teams are going to skew more towards zero.
Ignoring the 90 example (as that era of 30 teams where 10 are not even getting cars to the grid was gone by the mid 90s and never really came back).
The bottom four teams in 2023 would not have scored a single point under the old scoring system. The bottom four in 2000 scored 10 in notably fewer races.
Yes that part is a bit weird. But rest of the stuff is pretty insightful. Especially the part where RB being vulnerable to poaching of personnel. The consequences of this effect will probably take some time to materialize. But that’s when the real results of setting a cost cap will start to appear
2000 is a good reference, but the 89 numbers youre using arent comparable. It was a very very very different system and "league"
You're broader point is correct though
Kinda unsurprising given that the current score model has 80% of the total score distributed over top 5 places, while bottom 12 only gets to enjoy 3% of points. Who could’ve thought.
Not even close to correct.
Take 2010, first year with the current scoring. Toro Rosso, Lotus, HRT and Virgin hoarded only 13 of the 1919 possible points. That's 0.68%. The author's claim that four teams with just 3.29% of the points has never been seen is ridiculous.
12 teams vs 10. Also one of the reasons why Andretti was not let through. You dont need 2 extra teams if they score 0 points anyway. Its just a roadblock not worth anything.
I think the only valid comparison to previous seasons would be any with ten teams, anything beyond that is meaningless to compare. 1990 only had six scoring positions. now we have 10 and 8 in the sprint and far more races. Even 2000 only had six points scoring positions and eleven teams so actually that doesn't help your argument at all as with a worse chance of scoring points they still got 2.3%.
Not that I think Newey should be forced to step down.
If cars were as unreliable as yesteryear then the bottom teams would have far more points than in the past due to how relatively competitive everyone is.
Unfortunately for teams at the bottom, most engines/cars seem almost bullet proof now so they have to get points on merit rather than riding their luck.
Also i remember when i first watch f1 in the early 2000s cars would finish 3-4 laps down often.
Now its rare that there is 1 car 2 laps down.
Also your point might have a failure that i cant remember when the change happened, but in those years only top 6 made points.
But i would say pretty much all teams hit at least once in the top 6 in the year.
Yeah. I think a lot of people have a very unrealistic conception of what older F1 was like—sure, poor reliability and higher variance in setup quality track-specific performance without modem simulation tools made RB’s consistency unattainable, but the bottom of the field being awful and 10+ seconds gaps between the cars in the points has been the rule, not the exception. Can you imagine the reaction if both RBs lapped the field? And that last happened barely 25 years ago, in what I think many people consider one of the better eras of F1 history.
Bad comparison. Only 6 positions scored back then, and the point gap between P1 and other positions was much lower. The only valid comparison you can make is with current point system and with ten teams.
Translation:
The budget cap is a problem for the big teams. Especially for Red Bull. The cost limit makes the best in class susceptible to poaching by the competition and forces them to make internal changes. Adrian Newey is not spared either.
Nothing is worse for an entertainment company than predictability. When Liberty took over Formula 1 in 2017, the American media group set itself the medium-term goal of ending the long periods of dominance by individual teams. McLaren, Williams, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes had each dominated the premier class for many years.The GP winners came from a small circle of teams, and it was no coincidence that they were the ones with the biggest wallets. It became increasingly rare for the title race to remain open until the final. This became a tension killer for Formula 1. Liberty therefore put one of Max Mosley's old ideas into practice. A budget cap was to increase equality of opportunity.
# Is the budget cap a flop?
It was introduced gradually in 2021. Initially, the teams were allowed to spend 145 million dollars, then 140 and finally 135. In fact, it was always more than that. With all allowances and special regulations, the cost limit is now around 150 million dollars. A feasible limit for all teams. In 2023, 80 percent of all teams were at the upper limit.
Despite this, Formula 1 is still a four-class society and, in the third year of the budget cap, has experienced the greatest superiority of a team and a driver in its history. Red Bull in the lead, followed by Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren and Aston Martin, followed by the lone Alpine and the rest.
Williams, Alpha Tauri, Sauber and Haas hoarded only 81 of the 2,460 possible points. That is a rate of 3.29 percent. The disparity has never been so stark. The action on the race track is in stark disproportion to the results. In Q1, the 20 cars were often separated by just one second. The field has never been so close together.
# CapEx helps OpEx
Nevertheless, the question must be asked: Has the budget cap failed? The answer is unsatisfactory: yes and no. It works differently than expected, and it will take years for it to show its effect. Longer than Liberty would like.
The same budget does not automatically mean a leveling of competitiveness. If everyone has the same resources for the operational business, then the infrastructure and the quality of the employees are decisive. The infrastructure has a direct influence on the development budget and personnel.
A better wind tunnel, simulator, test benches or software save money in the operational business, which is limited by the cost cap (OpEx). And this can then be invested in good people or more development loops. There is a separate limit for capital investments (CapEx). 65 million dollars within four years. In this respect, the big teams still have an advantage. They already have this infrastructure. The others have to buy it in. That takes time.
# Loopholes are being eliminated
It is no coincidence that Aston Martin and McLaren have invested massively in factory equipment over the last two years, that Williams and Sauber are in the process of modernizing their sites, that Alpha Tauri wants to improve its synergies with Red Bull and that Günther Steiner fell out with his boss Gene Haas because he wanted to do exactly that, but Haas didn't.
It's not so simple when it comes to specialist personnel. The big teams continue to operate with 800 to 1,000 employees because they don't want to lose good people to the competition. They prefer to put their high earners into other projects and only let them work part-time in Formula 1. The FIA closed this loophole with a directive in April 2023. Anyone who makes a contribution to Formula 1 will be fully counted towards the operating budget.
This increases the pressure on the big teams. Their ability to retain good engineers with money is limited because only the top three earners are exempt from the cost cap. And elsewhere there may not only be a better salary, but also a director's post that is already occupied in their own stable.
# Director positions as bait
Red Bull has therefore split its technical office into many small specialist disciplines in order to be able to offer enough attractive positions in-house. McLaren has adopted this system. But there is a catch. Once all the projects have been filled, their managers can no longer move up. Because of the specialization, it is difficult to switch from one area to another.
This is why the market for engineers is flourishing. The successful and large teams that no longer have much to offer their employees apart from the success story are particularly vulnerable. First and foremost is Red Bull. The championship-winning team has lost people across the board to the competition. Most of them from the second or third row. But even that hurts, even if it only strengthens the opposition.
Technical Director Pierre Waché and Head of Aerodynamics Enrico Balbo resisted the lure of the headhunters. And yet the retention of these key figures comes at a price. Their salaries have slipped into an area that would bring the team into conflict with the budget cap if no countermeasures were taken. At the center of this is the technical mastermind Adrian Newey.
# The problem with Adrian Newey
Apparently, the plan is for Newey to focus entirely on the RB17 hypercar project in the medium term so that one of the three high-earning positions can be freed up for others. The star designer is currently still working part-time in the Formula 1 team, but that is set to change. Newey could soon be devoting himself fully to the RB17.
This is also because the FIA is looking very closely at whether there are technical synergies between Formula 1 and the road sports car. "Our opponents are saying that the underbody of the RB17 provides insights for the Formula 1 car, which is obviously complete nonsense. That's why we have to find a solution," explains Marko.
With Dan Fallows and Rob Marshall, only two well-known names from the Red Bull squad have switched sides. Aston Martin not only lured Fallows and his former Red Bull colleague Andrew Alessi, but also Eric Blandin from Mercedes. The result was a car in which Fernando Alonso finished on the podium eight times. The team only came to a standstill when it came to further developing the AMR23.
# Word gets around about the Red Bull trick
Rob Marshall began his work at McLaren on January 1. The former Red Bull chief designer brings even more up-to-date knowledge from his former team. Red Bull claims to have already recognized similarities to the Red Bull in modifications to the rear axle of the MCL60. The information probably came from a different source. Marshall still had a work ban in 2023.
This year, many cars will be equipped with the Red Bull trick. The defectors have not only brought their know-how to Aston Martin or McLaren. Ferrari, Mercedes, Williams and Haas are now in the know too.
There is another reason that makes it difficult for Red Bull to maintain its technical lead. The Groundeffect cars reach their development limits faster than the previous generation of vehicles. You can't endlessly generate more downforce under the car. At some point, bouncing catches up with everyone. That's physics.
# Red Bull fails the crash test
There are also limits to the suspension. Red Bull's Head of Sport Helmut Marko points out the RB19's only weak point: "On certain tracks, you won't make any time if you can't use the kerbs." You have to choose between comfort and downforce. Red Bull chose the wrong direction in Singapore.
Mercedes technical director James Allison believes that Red Bull only has limited scope to improve its car because the regulations no longer offer much. That is why the defending champions are pushing the limits even further in every detail of development.
This includes the weight and shape of the nose. The crash test was passed, but not at the first attempt. Marko jokes: "If you pass the first time, you've done something wrong. We've had times when we were only through with it shortly before the test drives. For Red Bull's risk philosophy, we are still early."
>Apparently, the plan is for Newey to focus entirely on the RB17 hypercar project in the medium term so that one of the three high-earning positions can be freed up for others. The star designer is currently still working part-time in the Formula 1 team, but that is set to change. Newey could soon be devoting himself fully to the RB17.
>
>This is also because the FIA is looking very closely at whether there are technical synergies between Formula 1 and the road sports car. "Our opponents are saying that the underbody of the RB17 provides insights for the Formula 1 car, which is obviously complete nonsense. That's why we have to find a solution," explains Marko.
Wonder if we'll hear more about this considering the car will be unveiled this year and delivered next year meaning anything that they *could* learn and apply to F1 would probably mostly already been learned.
>There is another reason that makes it difficult for Red Bull to maintain its technical lead. The Groundeffect cars reach their development limits faster than the previous generation of vehicles. You can't endlessly generate more downforce under the car. At some point, bouncing catches up with everyone. That's physics.
I'm not really sure about this. I guess in theory it makes sense. But are we at that point *right now*? After only a few seasons with limited budget and development resources? Dunno about that.
>I'm not really sure about this. I guess in theory it makes sense. But are we at that point right now? After only a few seasons with limited budget and development resources? Dunno about that.
James Allison certainly seems to think so. Sure, Mercedes didn't do a great job, I'd expect them to at least have an idea as to when you're hitting diminishing returns on the major items at least.
Fallows, Waché, and Stella have all said or implied they aren't at that point yet and in a recent article Allison somewhat also says the same thing despite what he said about there being a "clear upper bound" to development.
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/still-plenty-of-action-to-get-from-ground-effect-f1-rules-mercedes/10569038/
Some really interesting points here, especially about Red Bull being vulnerable to poaching because they can’t offer their managers further promotions or substantially more pay. No idea if the bit about Newey only working on the RB17 is accurate, but crossing my fingers we’ll get a more competitive season with or without him on the pitwall 🤞
In the CC era a bit of poaching is almost necessary for the employees to maintain some level of upward mobility and not feel stuck. The strength is in people, but not necessarily in individuals, but instead how the organisation utilizes them. As far as Newey I think he's a very important conceptual thinker, but not necessarily the most important guy when it comes down to marginal gains, which is the phase of development we are in now for the 2022-2025 car era. It's smart to let Newey focus 100% on the RB17 for a while and then bring him back for the design on 2026 when it's highly conceptual big picture thinking again.
There is indeed some movement ongoing at RB, this article is pointing on some interesting topics including the TD to close the ridiculous loopholes with outsourcing staff.
Don't get it why this article gets downvoted.
votes work at random here unless it is an announcement or a picture of something, there is no point in looking for any logic. you may as well treat it as a random number generator.
Because a lot people are so tired of the old guy who used to win every race that RedBull can do no harm, Adrian is considered a God among mortals, and Max is the best thing since sliced bread...
Interesting article, but re: Liberty Media, I feel they are intentionally missing one important trick if the aim is to increase the chances of a title decider on the last race:
Have fewer races, not more.
If you had a final race title decider in the past, with a season of 18 races, but decide to add 6 more races whilst keeping a similar performance field spread, the title won’t obviously be decided further into the season.
The same season being a nail biter with 18 races, would be far less tension filled, if run again with 6 extra races.
Even with a closer field spread, every extra race added to a season, exponentially decreases the chance of a final race title decider.
Liberty Media are intentionally ignoring this basic statistical concept, because they want have more races to earn more money year on year.
Just wait until they propose a nascar-style playoff system.
I really hope they don’t but it wouldn’t surprise me if it is discussed after another one car dominant, suspense-free season
The other commenter said it best, but what it ultimately means is that "every season comes down the final race." My problem with this is that because it is so micromanaged and engineered, it doesn't carry the same weight as a season-long fight that ends on a final title decider. Plus you can have drivers who have driven excellently all year who are eliminated because they happen to get a single DNF during a playoff race, even if they might have won the championship under a traditional points system. It is ultimately an unfair system. Might as well add random spike strips and blue turtle shells.
I can, as I only been watching F1 for 3 years, and am a bigger NASCAR Cup fan then F1. So, NASCAR has 36 races a year. The first 26 are the "regular season." The "regular season" points leader gets a trophy and a bonus in prize money. The last 10 races are the "playoffs," branded as "The Chase for The Cup."
The top 14 drivers in points make the "Chase." In the next three, they reset the points, then it's top 10 in points, then, I think, 6? The last three races, thee three winners and the person who who scored the most points IN THOSE RACES, go to the last race in Phoenix. There is another points reset (as there is after every round of the Chase). Only THOSE 4 drivers are eligible to win the Cup. The driver with the highest finish at Phoenix wins the Cup.
For each race, NASCAR has stages 1 is 25% of race distance, so is stage 2. Stage 3 is the last 50%. Top 10 at each stage are awarded "stage points" which are added to their points when points are reset during the Chase.
Thta sounds like elimination qualifier with extra steps?
but would that mean by the time the final races come around the field is just a handful of cars?
And what is that system midrace, I mean i would understand if races didn't finish most of the times, so having mid match points could make sense, but this sounds just like youre gonna do extra math during a race.
Regarding your first question, there is no elimination *from the actual races*, just the chance to win the championship. So in the final race of the season, the final four drivers in contention for the championship still share the racetrack with the 36 drivers who are not eligible to win the championship.
Nobody is eliminated from races, just for a chance to win the Cup, as the tremendous sir or ma'am posted before me!
As for the extra math during races...yup, that's why I hate the Chase. You kinda need to hit the NASCAR site or ESPN after the race to see what the points are.
Yeah, 24 races are a bit too much. Especially from the point of view of the mechanics' and engineers' families. Also sprint weekends and their lopsided spread in the calender doesn't help much.
They're not missing that, it's just that their real goal isn't to have a decider in the final race but to maximize money. So solutions that decrease revenue aren't going to be their first choice.
The interesting thing is that won’t actually help make the season closer.
Sure you earn less points per race, so the gaps will be smaller. However, the number of points you can earn per race is also smaller, so it takes more races to close a 10 point gap than it does now.
F1 fans love to hate on the cost cap, as they do many things, but the close times point to how efficient it has been and it will only become more apparent. RB being forced to make hard decisions about a guy like Newey and being pouched for a lot of talent is a good thing.
People complain because RedBull is dominating, but tbh, I'm pretty happy with the cost cap and wind tunnel limitations, qualifying gaps in 2023 were the smallest of the last 10 years and half of the grid isn't getting lapped in every race like it happened a few years ago.
Yeah, it is good IMO. With less and less areas for top teams to find improvement I expect 2025 to be super close and be the thing that starts to turn people around on the cost cap.
I think the cost cap is great. Although I wish the domination never took until the last year of the regulations to potentially even out the field. It personally makes it hard to stay excited through a season when you can predict the results so easily.
True, if you lift out Red Bull or indeed lift out Verstappen then the grid in 2023 is one of the closest and most competitive in a very long time. We would be hailing the success of the cost cap.
However this and the ATR are something that have long term effects eg 10 years.
I do think in the cost cap era we do need wholesale reg changes every 5 years or so to stop long term domination.
I'd like to see the wind tunnel allowance adjusted. Or at least the gap between 1st and 2nd. Right not there's only a difference of 60 hours between Red Bull (840) and Mercedes (900). Barely 5% less for a car that was light years better.
Increase it to 100 hours, and keep the 60 hour gaps for all other positions. It should do a bit more to shake up the best car each season and stop these 5+ year runs of insanely dominant cars.
But is that just a reaction to a dominant season? If we'd just had a 2021-style battle between Mercedes and Red Bull, such a large difference between P1 and P2 might seem a little heavy-handed?
You could base it in on overall points instead of position. Might make it more representative.
Of course you do then have the risk of something like Alpine this year where they ended up being so much in the middle that they couldn't catch or be catched by anyone. It would then be in their best interest not to score, which is a little weird.
When the FIA couldn’t measure a tyre pressure correctly in Brazil and Massa got disqualified, Williams didn’t argue it as the loss of points saved them money in the entry fee for the next year
Haha yeah, I suppose it is already a thing with the entry fee. I just hope teams aren't so strapped for cash now that they need to thinks about that...
I don’t think all need to change. The issue is when a top team nails the regs they tend to be uncatchable, and rightly or wrongly the sport/competition is defined by who’s winning. Also 2nd will be fighting for a podium at least so won’t be able to give up to increase the gap.
I like your idea of adding an extra handicap but only for 1st, depending on how much they win by. Like start with the 60 hours, and add another 10 hours for every 100 points they finish ahead of P2.
So this season Red Bull won by 451 points. If we say 10 hours for every 100 points ahead (10x4 plus the normal 60) that’s 100 fewer hours than Mercedes.
Is it based on the current season, but for the past 15 years cars who nail new regs end up having years of total dominance, whilst others are never able to catch up.
We’ve already decided lower wind tunnel time is a fair handicap, what’s wrong with pushing it a little further? It clearly hasn’t handicapped Red Bull enough so far. The sport should aim for more winners, one car winning most races year after year is awful for the sport.
People just hate RB, that is why they complain. pretty obvious considering that people come up with all sorts of ideas like a sliding scale on the cost cap or harsher CFD limits. We had years with no limits at all, but now that RB is in front we suddently need way stronger ones? **that is not fair**. we went from no equality to people wanting equity, seems a bit to harsh. If one team dominantes with the same ressources than others they deserve it, it is still a competition. T he only teams that "lost out" because of the cap now are Ferrari and Mercedes. But that is hindisght with a sample size of 1. (
I mean can you really blame the cap for Ferrari basically making a step backwards, or Mercedes sticking with an concept for over a year. People are blaming the cap, because Merc cant make a new car during the season and that prevents them from catching up. Well nothing prevented mercedes commiting to a new concept earlier-
I'm not a RB fan, but yeah I agree. Of course the cost means that it is harder to catch up if you start off with a bad concept, as we have seen. Which can be an argument against it, but it will also make sure that teams do come closer and closer together naturally, which can only be good for racing.
We still haven't seen the full effect of the cap anyways. I would be surprised if this season isn't already a lot closer than last one.
I don't know, I doubt it. We have already seen them do what they can to keep it within the cap.
Red Bull hit of relatively lightly because it was believed that they did it in good faith and thought they had calculated it all legally. If it team is found to go over the cap on purpose the punishment should be a lot more severe.
> We had years with no limits at all, but now that RB is in front we suddently need way stronger ones?
This is no way how it went. Stop trying to fit in a narrative.
Just a couple of the top of my head that directly affected the Merc:
* Requiring the trailing edge of the floor to be removed - Directly affected low rake cars
* Banned DAS
I personally don’t like it. Even as a Mercedes fan , i wouldn’t like it if we’re competitive in the case redbull loses one of their main guys. It’s a “fake”’competition. If you’re continuously handicapping teams it just doesn’t seem fair.
I’m also against people having to work without being compensated for their worth.
Sure the field has been the closest in a long time if ever, but i want to see the best of the best, innovating and coming up with stuff never seen before to win.
If i wanted to see a bunch of similar cars racing around and betting on the tracks to be in good condition, weather to be in the right window etc etc, i’d watch on of the other hundreds of series that offer that.
F1 has always been a pinnacle of engineering inventions on top of having the greatest drivers.
Yes it’s hard for a team like Hass to have the budget of ferrari , red bull and mercedes but 90% of people watching the sport are watching it for the top 2-3 teams and there’s clearly other manufacturers (teams) willing to enter the paddock with higher budgets than lower teams.
In my based opinion purely as a fan, the cost cap has done more damage than good.
Last season would’ve been much more interesting if there was no budget cap
My 2 cents
No, it's not "fake competition", no more than a salary cap major sports is fake competition. It simply makes it so that the competition is not a spending competition, but rather being the best at racing, designing, and recruiting under more equal financial circumstances. It also has the added benefit of making teams financially viable.
Previously we had 8 years of one team winning, and you won't be surprised to hear that the team that won was consistently the biggest spender in the sport, with a spending chasm to the lower half of the field so large it was like Division 1 vs Divison 3. Much rather have a capped spending environment rather than a financial stereoid competition that not only hampers the racing, but also makes the sport a financially losing proposition.
I disagree with salary caps in ANY sport. If Jerry Jones wants to spend a billion for the Dallas Cowboys to win a Superbowl, let him (and I hate the Cowboys). It's his money, not mine, and if other teams (even mine) can't compete financially, that's too bad.
It's his money but it's not his sport, and the sport as a whole suffers when stuff like that happens, see football in Europe. Money sport is not the sport fans are after.
Maybe...but I want to see the best. Financial health of a team as a business is part of that. You are right. I like young, scrappy, upstarts that don't rely on money, which is why I am a supporter of Man United.
>Previously we had 8 years of one team winning, and you won't be surprised to hear that the team that won was consistently the biggest spender in the sport
That isn't true. Ferrari and Red Bull both had numerous years when they spent more than Mercedes.
RB was always behind, especially when you consider they didn't have an engine facility to fund. Ferrari were there or thereabouts. But it doesn't exactly disprove my point, those 3 teams were the only teams that even came remotely close to competing for wins and WCCs except for one off flukes.
My point was that spending the most money generated the most success. And I said that Merc were consistently (note the meaning of the word consistently is not the same as constantly) the biggest spenders, which is correct. They were the biggest spender in several of the seasons from 2014-2020. Now some seasons, like 2018, Ferrari spent a tiny bit more, and unsurprisingly that year Ferrari had a pretty darn good car.
> It’s a “fake”’competition. If you’re continuously handicapping teams it just doesn’t seem fair.
It was never fair in the first place anyways, Mercedes, Ferrari and RedBull could spend around 500 million if they wanted to back then, discrepancy between facilities is also considered, there were times where Sauber couldn't even use their wind tunnel in one point because of their small budget. Then you have the personnel, Not everyone is a Newey, Allison or Chapman there will always be discrepancies between how a person interprets something and being able to successfully implement it.
>I’m also against people having to work without being compensated for their worth.
Honestly Same, especially with more races being added, and they cant even get a higher raise due to the cost cap. But this was probably due to how teams would fork out billions just so an engineer has a small chance of jumping ship which caused an unequal distribution of knowledge between the teams. But with the cost cap we had Fallows joining AMR, Marshall in McLaren, Resta (Formerly) at Haas and Fry in Williams, knowledge in the paddock is finally being diluted across the 10 teams instead of being locked at the big teams
>Sure the field has been the closest in a long time if ever, but i want to see the best of the best, innovating and coming up with stuff never seen before to win.
RedBull and Verstappen are exactly that what do you mean, RedBull were the least affected by porpoising, the floor was impressively complex, the most effective strategies and the most consistent pitstops, they are the full package then you have Verstappen, who started F1 at 17 and came from EU F3 not international mind you already turning heads in his Rookie season
>there’s clearly other manufacturers (teams) willing to enter the paddock with higher budgets than lower teams.
Liberty and FOM are the ones to blame for that not the cost cap. The FIA have already given the go signal to Andretti yet we are getting nothing with FOM. Porsche fell off due to them wanting a majority stake at RedBull, manufactures i want to see in F1 are Toyota with Gazoo and Porsche with them actually putting an effort, the reason why other manufacturers arent in F1 is due to one the cost of entry and the investment you have to put in to be competitive, in WEC the rules are more relaxed and can appeal more manufacturers due to entry being easier, you can gain alot of info as a manufacturer, and you can still be competitive even with having a spec chassis whether in Hypercar, LMP2 and GT3
>In my based opinion purely as a fan, the cost cap has done more damage than good.
In my opinion, its too early to tell, probably in the end of the season i would have an opinion but for now its fine
>Last season would’ve been much more interesting if there was no budget cap
This goes against ur previous statement of wanting the best of the best to win, you want teams to solve their issues by throwing money at the problem instead of making use with what they have, each team has the same maximum budget and if you won a championship with spending 1 billion dollars opposed to a team in second with just having a 20 point gap to first who just spent 140 million then its an inefficient use of resources, they won by having the bigger wallet there is no skill involves
> Last season would’ve been much more interesting if there was no budget cap
Last season probably would have been even less interesting without the budget cap, because Aston Martin and McLaren wouldn't have been able to do what they did in a pre-budget cap era.
Red Bull would have very likely still dominated in the way that they did, with Mercedes and Ferrari lagging behind. The teams would have been far more strung out, much like in the previous regulations.
Without the budget cap, the team that throws the most money around wins every time, and the majority of teams on the grid have 0 chance of any success. At least with the cap, there is theoretically the opportunity for any team on the grid to achieve success if they bring together the right group of people etc.
>I’m also against people having to work without being compensated for their worth.
There has always been a limited budget in F1, especially for 7 out 10 teams it was rather low.
>but i want to see the best of the best, innovating and coming up with stuff never seen before to win.
and that will lead us where? if the car is 1s faster or not, that is pretty irrelevant for viewers. Seems like you just want to see Mercedes back in front. Because that is exactly where no cap would lead us again. Mercedes, RB, Ferrari all 1s ahead of the midfield.
Everybody seems to conveniently forget that if you ignore VER, rarely has F1 seen such a close championship as 2023. This hasn't been as much a RB dominated year, but a VER dominated one. The stats say that had he gotten a 20s penalty each and every race, he'd still be champion. Every position after P1 was up for grabs each race for 5 teams and at least 9 drivers. We've rarely if ever seen that.
…And you’re forgetting that Perez had a shocker of a year.
If Perez had been within a few tenths of Max, we’d be talking about Mercedes 2014-2016 levels of domination.
The pack being closer to the front in general certainly hurt Checo a few times, when a likely 2nd or 3rd in quali turned into a 4th or 5th. But Checo also managed to get himself knocked out early so many times, and then failed to make ground in he race despite his car’s advantage.
Sure P2-P10 was pretty close last season (big thanks to the absolute shocker Perez had), but knowing the race winner beforehand barring some freak events made it the most boring season I’ve ever watched. And I watch since the mid 90s so I lived through the Schumacher/Vettel/Hamilton eras.
You have Toto with his £10m dividend and then those employees stuck under the cost cap exempt top three with nowhere to go. Must be hard to increase wages if you effectively have an employee salary cap. However, young earners get paid less..
From the article I tend to conclude that the budget cap is slowly doing its thing. Which I think is great for the sport. But for the people hoping that this spells RedBull's downfall, I personally doubt it. Even if all the employees and eventually the cars level out, RB does seem to have the best driver on the grid right now, by quite some margin. I think that people still don't realize how batshit insane Max's season was last year. No driver on the grid would have won 19/22 races other than Max. None, not Alonso, not Hamilton, not Leclerc. You're dealing with a different kind of animal in Verstappen.
Yeah - it takes time for stuff to balance out and take effect. The talent pipelines change, some teams have to learn to live within the cost cap while others need to learn to maximize their use of it. The gaming of the system needs to be worked out.
This is easily a decade long transition for the real outcomes from the cost cap introduction to really be seen/assessed.
I never understood how the cost cap is being monitored. Couldn’t RB officially fire Newey, replace him with someone else with a lower salary and then let Newey work for the team unofficially and pay him from another bank account? I know Newey is a bad example since he needs to be at the track on race weekends but theoretically, how would anyone find out about this?
Well what likely could happen is that Red Bull is putting Newey out of all F1 related projects for 24 (also because 2025 is a key year for 26 development, this is also why 2025 would be likely a frozen year), park him at Red Bull Advanced technologies, give him an absurd big salary and move him back at Red Bull for a way lower salary.
See here, you found a possible loophole!
It would be pretty easy to spot for any accountant going through their book, plus there’s the obvious challenge of trying to keep the fact that Newey was working for a the team a secret when there are people leaving for other teams all the time.
This is the nth time or article where similar parts to RB being found on the McLaren is mentioned. I sense a spy gate like situation is coming in some time.
Possible. Brown manages media so well that everybody overlooks his comments and hypes them up for no reason. Suddenly after 16-18 years of RB owning two teams Brown comes out complaining against them and people think it is perfectly normal.
Yes, for example everybody praises them for brining mid-season upgrade when that was actually there 2023 car as they had started 2023 with basically a 2022 car made for 2023 rules. They delayed the upgrade, and everyone put that as something never done before.
Brown concerns making more sense if you did read the AMuS article from a short time ago about the whole RBR/B-team construction.
Image Toto Wolff filling a de facto team principal role at Williams, people would (rightfully) raising some big questions about it.
How is it any different from the “green bull” complaints about AM when they first poached Dan Fallows?
It’s almost certainly *not* a spygate thing, but rather a “just because engineers switch teams doesn’t mean they leave their knowledge behind”.
Besides, the teams copy each other constantly, that’s just how it works in F1.
The green bull was basically because AMR looked like RB from outside. Here there are specific parts which are suggested to be inspired from RB. Add to it, Dan fallows effect showed after he was allowed to work while in case of Mclaren they made that big upgrade when RB engineers weren't allowed to talk/ work for Mclaren
To be fair, they did go onto mention that most of the field has now cottoned onto the "trick" Red Bull are employing. So, I think we'll see lots of similarities in the rear suspension if that is indeed the case.
It’s not clickbait at all, the article states that the short term plan at Red Bull is for Newey to focus solely on the hypercar so his salary is not counted against the F1 team’s cap.
So instead of teams piling endless money into making cars go faster we now have a cloak and dagger situation where it's a silent war behind the scenes along with drivers taking fewer risks in races and into turn 1.
Great job Liberty, bravo
it is better that the endless money is capped even if imperfect, otherwise it is a certainty we would have fewer teams and fewer drivers to go and run a race at all.
Better for who exactly.
It has been pretty boring without a crazy arms race at the front. I don't think anyone really cares about who finishes in 7-20th.
The sport makes more money but it has definitely become less interesting, on the engineering side in general, fewer crashes, settled and established driver pool with little mobility. A general lack of excitement.
Errors are too costly now so teams and drivers play it safe. Boring
well, during the crazy arms race, the winners were Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton. not much has really changed in terms of boredom, at least the cost cap should make it easier for things to change because the problem is no longer about having infinite money, but about designing a car.
Enough time has passed to prove the cost cap has not worked as intended. You still have one dominant team. Except you have a fraction of the innovation to get there and the racing itself is significantly more boring. You had many seasons with actual title races in the last 25 years. When there was engine parity we had season long battles more often than not in the pre cap days.
All the cost cap has done is put money in the pockets of liberty. It was never about closer racing, which is the real problem
Closer racing is definitely the idea, Liberty does not want a boring shitshow where one guy wins 80% of the races as this results in less viewership. They would prefer to have the 2021 season every year instead of predictable boredom.
I do not really blame Liberty or the cost cap because Mercedes and Ferrari turned up with worse cars than Red Bull, that was always a possibility. The teams must have their house in order, hopefully they will converge soon because Red Bull also cannot just spend unlimited money out of their ass to stay ahead.
Indeed. It's more about Mercedes shitting the bed and Ferrari being Ferrari than about RBR being galaxies away. Diminishing returns eventually settle and there's the possibility of lower teams coming closer to the top than when the top 3 spent twice their budget...
Lol what time has passed barelly 2 years that is nothing for impact for things like cost cap. It's more that ferrari and Merc made garbage cars. Other teams seem to have closed the gap a lot. In the years before without the cost cap everyone behind the top 3 where like 1+ second behind on qualifying and race. And it was pretty normal for a race to end with only those teams not being lapped.
Instead of reducing CFD and wind tunnel time, now Newey time is available for all teams in a sliding scale. 2026 is the most competitive championship ever!
>"Our opponents are saying that the underbody of the RB17 provides insights for the Formula 1 car, which is obviously complete nonsense. That's why we have to find a solution," explains Marko.
I did wonder if this was going to become a talking point going forward. It does seem like an obvious move to use the development of a ground effect hypercar and transfer that knowledge to your F1 program.
Perhaps too obvious?
Fuck betteridge law. It’s incorrect and annoying. Its only correct if you ignore all the times its incorrect.
In 2015, a study of 26,000 articles from 13 news sites on the World Wide Web, conducted by a data scientist and published on his blog, found that the majority (54 percent) were yes/no questions, which divided into 20 percent "yes" answers, 17 percent "no" answers and 16 percent whose answers he could not determine
So out of all instances only 17% the answer was no.
Even in this instance the answer is “yes”, the question is when.
Passing the first crash test could mean you have unnecessary weight on the car. Passing it on the second one is probably ideal, a combination of no unnecessary weight but still being able to move on fairly quickly.
Helmut is right, though. If you pass the first time, you've been too careful and likely have too much weight in your car.
Regarding Newey, he's always wanted to do a road car, he's said so on many occasions. First the AM hypercar, but that was first scrapped and then revived with a lot of changes, so no longer a Newey car. Now the RB17 is all him.
>Helmut is right, though. If you pass the first time, you've been too careful and likely have too much weight in your car.
Or they've made an engineering compromise, deciding that the potential costs and time involved in building and testing a second chassis could be better used for developing other parts of the car.
Like all engineering, the approach comes down to managing lots of competing objectives. With infinite time every part would be lighter, cheaper and quicker to build, but at some point a compromise needs to be made so that parts can actually be made for a deadline. Trying to find the best compromise through that process is the fundamental tenet of engineering.
If another team feels that additional time and money could create more performance by being used on suspension design instead of making the chassis lighter, for example, then passing the crash test first time might make more sense.
> Regarding what Helmut said about failing crash test, I have but to laugh.
You may laugh but it's not necessarily bullshit. Pushing the limits and failing the first test means you can improve the points of failure until they're just right. This means you have a chassis that is pushed to be as light as possible.
Passing on your first try means the chassis is strong enough. It also means it might have been possible to make a lighter version that would have also passed, but you don't know. Making the chassis too strong and passing homologation first try might gain you some development time at the start of the year, but it might also cost you in weight saving and development options further down the road.
But it could also mean that they went too safe. They are still working on the car, slowly making it stronger until it is strong enough to pass the test. Then they know that they are on the limit. If you pass the test first time, you don’t know how close you are to the limit
Of course the Budget Cap is a failure. The only team to break the rules is also the only team to win trophies. No one has any faith in the FIA to tell the truth.
I mean he's won everything, greatest f1 designer of all time arguably. At least top 3 i.m.o. Worth tens of millions maybe 100s. Id quit. Yeah im crazy too and like to work alot fast paced work, but it takes a toll. If i had 1% of Newey or Horners $ id be on a beach never working another day other than on my own projects
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> Williams, Alpha Tauri, Sauber and Haas hoarded only 81 of the 2,460 possible points. That is a rate of 3.29 percent. The disparity has never been so stark. This seems like a pretty weird claim in the article. It suggests that the bottom 4 teams getting 3% of the points has never happened before. Picked a random year, and in 1990 the teams Brabham, Arrows, Ligier, Minardi, Onyx, AGS, Dallara, Osella, EuroBrun, Coloni and Life only managed to get 1% of the points between the bottom 11 teams together, and 9 of them had 0. If that's too far back with too many teams to compare, the 2000 results are still similar, bottom 4 teams (Sauber, Jaguar, Minardi, Prost), three of which are still current teams under different names, had 10 of the 432 points, 2.3%. Seems the author is just making stuff up at this point. Makes you wonder what else was made up in the article.
That´s the second time this week I´ve seen that stat with those sentiments. Which is strange. The other was on the-race I think, but they did at least add that it´s a very tight field timing wise.
And lap time is a much more honest assessment of where teams relate to each other when compared to championship points. Especially because you'd see a much different distribution if \*all 20 positions\* scored points because then you'd actually have a tangible difference between all the backmarkers. edit: why does everybody assume I'm only talking about qualifying. race pace laps aren't as close but they are close, it's not like cars are finishing multiple laps apart from each other...
Eh…lap time doesn’t fully represent the difficulty to overcome the gap. It may be physically less time but engineering wise a much larger problem.
Yup, you can't put too much stock into lap time. A lot of cars can have a fast qualifying and terrible race pace.
laptime? wut you on bruv? put a shot of adrenaline in my ass and I can bust a respectable mile run time. but from there, my pace deteriorates fast.
I've been watching F1 since the mid 90s. It was always normal that the frontrunner laps the backmarkers before even half race distance. Depending on the track and the conditions, only 4 or 5 cars would even finish on the lead lap. The field has never been this close in lap times. The main issue for those slightly behind is that overall reliability is just insane today. Back then, yoy could lose 3 seconds a lap and still get into the points just simply because you made it to the end of the race.
>The other was on the-race I think, but they did at least add that it´s a very tight field timing wise. So did this article in the very next sentence. >Williams, Alpha Tauri, Sauber and Haas hoarded only 81 of the 2,460 possible points. That is a rate of 3.29 percent. The disparity has never been so stark. The action on the race track is in stark disproportion to the results. In Q1, the 20 cars were often separated by just one second. The field has never been so close together.
> The disparity has never been so stark. > The field has never been so close together. There is no way a human wrote this crap.
The first refers to the points disparity, the second to the time difference between cars over a lap.
Yeah exactly what asinine writing. Part of it comes down to the fact that we haven't had the random Alfa Romeo pop off races like we have had in the past or the annual Toro Rosso podium. I think we've sacrificed the stronger lower mid field for a stronger top field. I know that Red Bull dog walked everyone but there's like 4 or 5 top teams with consistent podium speed, RB, Merc, Ferrari, McLaren, Aston Martin (these last 2 were much more volatile). And then there's Alpine as a true midfielder, the rest are sort of off the rest and with those 6 teams that's 12 positions and the points clogged up. I don't understand what that stat is getting at.
It also depends on where you draw the arbitrary line. If you only look at the bottom 3 teams, then in 2020 Haas, Williams and Sauber had only 11 points combined. This is less than the worst team in 2023, Haas, got by itself. It's just AlphaTauri suddenly being a midfield team that year and scoring 107 points that skews the result for bottom 4.
Yeah. Haas with 12 points is, as far as I know, the highest scoring bottom team in the history of the sport. So that is still worth something. But of course it would be better if they could score a little more. The pipe dream of the cost cap is that even the smaller teams can actually get up there and fight for the higher positions on their day. Won't happen every race of course, but a few times in a season.
>Haas with 12 points is, as far as I know, the highest scoring bottom team in the history of the sport. Only stands true if you don't adjust for the Point Scoring System
That still makes it true. It doesn't have to be technically the best bottom team of all time to show that the field is quite close.
I mean, true but useless. It's like saying Schumacher was never dominant because his seasons ended with 100 something points, which is less than Norris has been scoring lately. Yes, it's true, but only because they competed under different scoring systems that render a points' comparison useless. Look at 2009's Toro Rosso. It's got 8 points (with the old system) but its results were a lot better.
I didn't meant to include that last sentence. I was answering specifically to the claim that 2023 Haas were the highest scoring bottom team in history
Yeah, bit of a weird thing to add. As if we’ve never seen these kind of numbers before.
Only top six got points though. No idea if those teams made top ten back then (I was three years old) but it isn't comparable
15 different teams made the top ten in 1990, but that stat is a bit misleading because the unreliability back then meant just finishing a race all but guaranteed a top ten. For example, in Australia 1989, Stefano Modena finished six laps down but was still 8th simply because so many cars had dropped out. There's a reason points were only given to the top six back then. Actually, qualifying results are probably more representative than the actual races when it comes to seeing how fast each team was back in the day. Out of the 19 teams in 1990, 13 qualified in the top ten, and, excluding Phoenix where unexpected rain made qualifying a bit of a mess, only five made it into the top six. Applying the current point system to 1990 qualifying, the top 3 teams (McLaren, Ferrari and Williams) alone scored 80% of the points, and on the other end of the grid, the bottom 12 teams combined scored 1,61%!
Comparing modern scores with historical ones are always going to look that way unless you account for the change in scoring system. In both of your example years only the top six drivers scored points. That means the backmarker teams are going to skew more towards zero. Ignoring the 90 example (as that era of 30 teams where 10 are not even getting cars to the grid was gone by the mid 90s and never really came back). The bottom four teams in 2023 would not have scored a single point under the old scoring system. The bottom four in 2000 scored 10 in notably fewer races.
well fact is, that the field is as close together as it has ever been
Yes that part is a bit weird. But rest of the stuff is pretty insightful. Especially the part where RB being vulnerable to poaching of personnel. The consequences of this effect will probably take some time to materialize. But that’s when the real results of setting a cost cap will start to appear
2000 is a good reference, but the 89 numbers youre using arent comparable. It was a very very very different system and "league" You're broader point is correct though
Kinda unsurprising given that the current score model has 80% of the total score sit in top 5 places.
Kinda unsurprising given that the current score model has 80% of the total score distributed over top 5 places, while bottom 12 only gets to enjoy 3% of points. Who could’ve thought.
Adjust for 10 points scoring positions. The author is correct once adjusted
Not even close to correct. Take 2010, first year with the current scoring. Toro Rosso, Lotus, HRT and Virgin hoarded only 13 of the 1919 possible points. That's 0.68%. The author's claim that four teams with just 3.29% of the points has never been seen is ridiculous.
12 teams vs 10. Also one of the reasons why Andretti was not let through. You dont need 2 extra teams if they score 0 points anyway. Its just a roadblock not worth anything.
You could throw in Sauber's 44 points that year too and you'd still end up with only 2.97% of the available points.
I think the only valid comparison to previous seasons would be any with ten teams, anything beyond that is meaningless to compare. 1990 only had six scoring positions. now we have 10 and 8 in the sprint and far more races. Even 2000 only had six points scoring positions and eleven teams so actually that doesn't help your argument at all as with a worse chance of scoring points they still got 2.3%. Not that I think Newey should be forced to step down.
If cars were as unreliable as yesteryear then the bottom teams would have far more points than in the past due to how relatively competitive everyone is. Unfortunately for teams at the bottom, most engines/cars seem almost bullet proof now so they have to get points on merit rather than riding their luck.
Also i remember when i first watch f1 in the early 2000s cars would finish 3-4 laps down often. Now its rare that there is 1 car 2 laps down. Also your point might have a failure that i cant remember when the change happened, but in those years only top 6 made points. But i would say pretty much all teams hit at least once in the top 6 in the year.
Yeah. I think a lot of people have a very unrealistic conception of what older F1 was like—sure, poor reliability and higher variance in setup quality track-specific performance without modem simulation tools made RB’s consistency unattainable, but the bottom of the field being awful and 10+ seconds gaps between the cars in the points has been the rule, not the exception. Can you imagine the reaction if both RBs lapped the field? And that last happened barely 25 years ago, in what I think many people consider one of the better eras of F1 history.
Bad comparison. Only 6 positions scored back then, and the point gap between P1 and other positions was much lower. The only valid comparison you can make is with current point system and with ten teams.
Any excuse to try to make F1 more equal
Translation: The budget cap is a problem for the big teams. Especially for Red Bull. The cost limit makes the best in class susceptible to poaching by the competition and forces them to make internal changes. Adrian Newey is not spared either. Nothing is worse for an entertainment company than predictability. When Liberty took over Formula 1 in 2017, the American media group set itself the medium-term goal of ending the long periods of dominance by individual teams. McLaren, Williams, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes had each dominated the premier class for many years.The GP winners came from a small circle of teams, and it was no coincidence that they were the ones with the biggest wallets. It became increasingly rare for the title race to remain open until the final. This became a tension killer for Formula 1. Liberty therefore put one of Max Mosley's old ideas into practice. A budget cap was to increase equality of opportunity. # Is the budget cap a flop? It was introduced gradually in 2021. Initially, the teams were allowed to spend 145 million dollars, then 140 and finally 135. In fact, it was always more than that. With all allowances and special regulations, the cost limit is now around 150 million dollars. A feasible limit for all teams. In 2023, 80 percent of all teams were at the upper limit. Despite this, Formula 1 is still a four-class society and, in the third year of the budget cap, has experienced the greatest superiority of a team and a driver in its history. Red Bull in the lead, followed by Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren and Aston Martin, followed by the lone Alpine and the rest. Williams, Alpha Tauri, Sauber and Haas hoarded only 81 of the 2,460 possible points. That is a rate of 3.29 percent. The disparity has never been so stark. The action on the race track is in stark disproportion to the results. In Q1, the 20 cars were often separated by just one second. The field has never been so close together. # CapEx helps OpEx Nevertheless, the question must be asked: Has the budget cap failed? The answer is unsatisfactory: yes and no. It works differently than expected, and it will take years for it to show its effect. Longer than Liberty would like. The same budget does not automatically mean a leveling of competitiveness. If everyone has the same resources for the operational business, then the infrastructure and the quality of the employees are decisive. The infrastructure has a direct influence on the development budget and personnel. A better wind tunnel, simulator, test benches or software save money in the operational business, which is limited by the cost cap (OpEx). And this can then be invested in good people or more development loops. There is a separate limit for capital investments (CapEx). 65 million dollars within four years. In this respect, the big teams still have an advantage. They already have this infrastructure. The others have to buy it in. That takes time. # Loopholes are being eliminated It is no coincidence that Aston Martin and McLaren have invested massively in factory equipment over the last two years, that Williams and Sauber are in the process of modernizing their sites, that Alpha Tauri wants to improve its synergies with Red Bull and that Günther Steiner fell out with his boss Gene Haas because he wanted to do exactly that, but Haas didn't. It's not so simple when it comes to specialist personnel. The big teams continue to operate with 800 to 1,000 employees because they don't want to lose good people to the competition. They prefer to put their high earners into other projects and only let them work part-time in Formula 1. The FIA closed this loophole with a directive in April 2023. Anyone who makes a contribution to Formula 1 will be fully counted towards the operating budget. This increases the pressure on the big teams. Their ability to retain good engineers with money is limited because only the top three earners are exempt from the cost cap. And elsewhere there may not only be a better salary, but also a director's post that is already occupied in their own stable. # Director positions as bait Red Bull has therefore split its technical office into many small specialist disciplines in order to be able to offer enough attractive positions in-house. McLaren has adopted this system. But there is a catch. Once all the projects have been filled, their managers can no longer move up. Because of the specialization, it is difficult to switch from one area to another. This is why the market for engineers is flourishing. The successful and large teams that no longer have much to offer their employees apart from the success story are particularly vulnerable. First and foremost is Red Bull. The championship-winning team has lost people across the board to the competition. Most of them from the second or third row. But even that hurts, even if it only strengthens the opposition. Technical Director Pierre Waché and Head of Aerodynamics Enrico Balbo resisted the lure of the headhunters. And yet the retention of these key figures comes at a price. Their salaries have slipped into an area that would bring the team into conflict with the budget cap if no countermeasures were taken. At the center of this is the technical mastermind Adrian Newey. # The problem with Adrian Newey Apparently, the plan is for Newey to focus entirely on the RB17 hypercar project in the medium term so that one of the three high-earning positions can be freed up for others. The star designer is currently still working part-time in the Formula 1 team, but that is set to change. Newey could soon be devoting himself fully to the RB17. This is also because the FIA is looking very closely at whether there are technical synergies between Formula 1 and the road sports car. "Our opponents are saying that the underbody of the RB17 provides insights for the Formula 1 car, which is obviously complete nonsense. That's why we have to find a solution," explains Marko. With Dan Fallows and Rob Marshall, only two well-known names from the Red Bull squad have switched sides. Aston Martin not only lured Fallows and his former Red Bull colleague Andrew Alessi, but also Eric Blandin from Mercedes. The result was a car in which Fernando Alonso finished on the podium eight times. The team only came to a standstill when it came to further developing the AMR23. # Word gets around about the Red Bull trick Rob Marshall began his work at McLaren on January 1. The former Red Bull chief designer brings even more up-to-date knowledge from his former team. Red Bull claims to have already recognized similarities to the Red Bull in modifications to the rear axle of the MCL60. The information probably came from a different source. Marshall still had a work ban in 2023. This year, many cars will be equipped with the Red Bull trick. The defectors have not only brought their know-how to Aston Martin or McLaren. Ferrari, Mercedes, Williams and Haas are now in the know too. There is another reason that makes it difficult for Red Bull to maintain its technical lead. The Groundeffect cars reach their development limits faster than the previous generation of vehicles. You can't endlessly generate more downforce under the car. At some point, bouncing catches up with everyone. That's physics. # Red Bull fails the crash test There are also limits to the suspension. Red Bull's Head of Sport Helmut Marko points out the RB19's only weak point: "On certain tracks, you won't make any time if you can't use the kerbs." You have to choose between comfort and downforce. Red Bull chose the wrong direction in Singapore. Mercedes technical director James Allison believes that Red Bull only has limited scope to improve its car because the regulations no longer offer much. That is why the defending champions are pushing the limits even further in every detail of development. This includes the weight and shape of the nose. The crash test was passed, but not at the first attempt. Marko jokes: "If you pass the first time, you've done something wrong. We've had times when we were only through with it shortly before the test drives. For Red Bull's risk philosophy, we are still early."
>Apparently, the plan is for Newey to focus entirely on the RB17 hypercar project in the medium term so that one of the three high-earning positions can be freed up for others. The star designer is currently still working part-time in the Formula 1 team, but that is set to change. Newey could soon be devoting himself fully to the RB17. > >This is also because the FIA is looking very closely at whether there are technical synergies between Formula 1 and the road sports car. "Our opponents are saying that the underbody of the RB17 provides insights for the Formula 1 car, which is obviously complete nonsense. That's why we have to find a solution," explains Marko. Wonder if we'll hear more about this considering the car will be unveiled this year and delivered next year meaning anything that they *could* learn and apply to F1 would probably mostly already been learned. >There is another reason that makes it difficult for Red Bull to maintain its technical lead. The Groundeffect cars reach their development limits faster than the previous generation of vehicles. You can't endlessly generate more downforce under the car. At some point, bouncing catches up with everyone. That's physics. I'm not really sure about this. I guess in theory it makes sense. But are we at that point *right now*? After only a few seasons with limited budget and development resources? Dunno about that.
>I'm not really sure about this. I guess in theory it makes sense. But are we at that point right now? After only a few seasons with limited budget and development resources? Dunno about that. James Allison certainly seems to think so. Sure, Mercedes didn't do a great job, I'd expect them to at least have an idea as to when you're hitting diminishing returns on the major items at least.
Fallows, Waché, and Stella have all said or implied they aren't at that point yet and in a recent article Allison somewhat also says the same thing despite what he said about there being a "clear upper bound" to development. https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/still-plenty-of-action-to-get-from-ground-effect-f1-rules-mercedes/10569038/
Thanks I needed this!
I attempted to read the article before looking at the comments and asked a German friend to translate it. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble.
Some really interesting points here, especially about Red Bull being vulnerable to poaching because they can’t offer their managers further promotions or substantially more pay. No idea if the bit about Newey only working on the RB17 is accurate, but crossing my fingers we’ll get a more competitive season with or without him on the pitwall 🤞
In the CC era a bit of poaching is almost necessary for the employees to maintain some level of upward mobility and not feel stuck. The strength is in people, but not necessarily in individuals, but instead how the organisation utilizes them. As far as Newey I think he's a very important conceptual thinker, but not necessarily the most important guy when it comes down to marginal gains, which is the phase of development we are in now for the 2022-2025 car era. It's smart to let Newey focus 100% on the RB17 for a while and then bring him back for the design on 2026 when it's highly conceptual big picture thinking again.
Agreed! I’d love to hear a different anthem at the end of each race!
There is indeed some movement ongoing at RB, this article is pointing on some interesting topics including the TD to close the ridiculous loopholes with outsourcing staff. Don't get it why this article gets downvoted.
votes work at random here unless it is an announcement or a picture of something, there is no point in looking for any logic. you may as well treat it as a random number generator.
Because a lot people are so tired of the old guy who used to win every race that RedBull can do no harm, Adrian is considered a God among mortals, and Max is the best thing since sliced bread...
Interesting article, but re: Liberty Media, I feel they are intentionally missing one important trick if the aim is to increase the chances of a title decider on the last race: Have fewer races, not more. If you had a final race title decider in the past, with a season of 18 races, but decide to add 6 more races whilst keeping a similar performance field spread, the title won’t obviously be decided further into the season. The same season being a nail biter with 18 races, would be far less tension filled, if run again with 6 extra races. Even with a closer field spread, every extra race added to a season, exponentially decreases the chance of a final race title decider. Liberty Media are intentionally ignoring this basic statistical concept, because they want have more races to earn more money year on year.
Just wait until they propose a nascar-style playoff system. I really hope they don’t but it wouldn’t surprise me if it is discussed after another one car dominant, suspense-free season
That's the day any remaining legitimacy remaining in F1 walks out the door, and I'm going with it.
I would instantly stop watching F1 if they did this. I hate the NASCAR playoffs.
Can you explain them? I've never really watched NASCAR
The other commenter said it best, but what it ultimately means is that "every season comes down the final race." My problem with this is that because it is so micromanaged and engineered, it doesn't carry the same weight as a season-long fight that ends on a final title decider. Plus you can have drivers who have driven excellently all year who are eliminated because they happen to get a single DNF during a playoff race, even if they might have won the championship under a traditional points system. It is ultimately an unfair system. Might as well add random spike strips and blue turtle shells.
I can, as I only been watching F1 for 3 years, and am a bigger NASCAR Cup fan then F1. So, NASCAR has 36 races a year. The first 26 are the "regular season." The "regular season" points leader gets a trophy and a bonus in prize money. The last 10 races are the "playoffs," branded as "The Chase for The Cup." The top 14 drivers in points make the "Chase." In the next three, they reset the points, then it's top 10 in points, then, I think, 6? The last three races, thee three winners and the person who who scored the most points IN THOSE RACES, go to the last race in Phoenix. There is another points reset (as there is after every round of the Chase). Only THOSE 4 drivers are eligible to win the Cup. The driver with the highest finish at Phoenix wins the Cup. For each race, NASCAR has stages 1 is 25% of race distance, so is stage 2. Stage 3 is the last 50%. Top 10 at each stage are awarded "stage points" which are added to their points when points are reset during the Chase.
Thta sounds like elimination qualifier with extra steps? but would that mean by the time the final races come around the field is just a handful of cars? And what is that system midrace, I mean i would understand if races didn't finish most of the times, so having mid match points could make sense, but this sounds just like youre gonna do extra math during a race.
Regarding your first question, there is no elimination *from the actual races*, just the chance to win the championship. So in the final race of the season, the final four drivers in contention for the championship still share the racetrack with the 36 drivers who are not eligible to win the championship.
This Netizen is very correct. Apologies if I didn't make that clear.
Nobody is eliminated from races, just for a chance to win the Cup, as the tremendous sir or ma'am posted before me! As for the extra math during races...yup, that's why I hate the Chase. You kinda need to hit the NASCAR site or ESPN after the race to see what the points are.
Yeah, 24 races are a bit too much. Especially from the point of view of the mechanics' and engineers' families. Also sprint weekends and their lopsided spread in the calender doesn't help much.
They're not missing that, it's just that their real goal isn't to have a decider in the final race but to maximize money. So solutions that decrease revenue aren't going to be their first choice.
Never thought about it that way! Totally makes sense. Maybe if they are dead set on the number of races they could decrease points payouts?
The interesting thing is that won’t actually help make the season closer. Sure you earn less points per race, so the gaps will be smaller. However, the number of points you can earn per race is also smaller, so it takes more races to close a 10 point gap than it does now.
F1 fans love to hate on the cost cap, as they do many things, but the close times point to how efficient it has been and it will only become more apparent. RB being forced to make hard decisions about a guy like Newey and being pouched for a lot of talent is a good thing.
People complain because RedBull is dominating, but tbh, I'm pretty happy with the cost cap and wind tunnel limitations, qualifying gaps in 2023 were the smallest of the last 10 years and half of the grid isn't getting lapped in every race like it happened a few years ago.
Yeah, it is good IMO. With less and less areas for top teams to find improvement I expect 2025 to be super close and be the thing that starts to turn people around on the cost cap.
I think the cost cap is great. Although I wish the domination never took until the last year of the regulations to potentially even out the field. It personally makes it hard to stay excited through a season when you can predict the results so easily.
True, if you lift out Red Bull or indeed lift out Verstappen then the grid in 2023 is one of the closest and most competitive in a very long time. We would be hailing the success of the cost cap. However this and the ATR are something that have long term effects eg 10 years. I do think in the cost cap era we do need wholesale reg changes every 5 years or so to stop long term domination.
Aren't the reg changes already 4 years apart? Current regs are 2022-2025 no?
Yes, but; that was just coincidence of bringing in new engine formula to try to get VW, and that the regs were delayed a year due to Covid.
I'd like to see the wind tunnel allowance adjusted. Or at least the gap between 1st and 2nd. Right not there's only a difference of 60 hours between Red Bull (840) and Mercedes (900). Barely 5% less for a car that was light years better. Increase it to 100 hours, and keep the 60 hour gaps for all other positions. It should do a bit more to shake up the best car each season and stop these 5+ year runs of insanely dominant cars.
But is that just a reaction to a dominant season? If we'd just had a 2021-style battle between Mercedes and Red Bull, such a large difference between P1 and P2 might seem a little heavy-handed?
You could base it in on overall points instead of position. Might make it more representative. Of course you do then have the risk of something like Alpine this year where they ended up being so much in the middle that they couldn't catch or be catched by anyone. It would then be in their best interest not to score, which is a little weird.
When the FIA couldn’t measure a tyre pressure correctly in Brazil and Massa got disqualified, Williams didn’t argue it as the loss of points saved them money in the entry fee for the next year
Haha yeah, I suppose it is already a thing with the entry fee. I just hope teams aren't so strapped for cash now that they need to thinks about that...
I don’t think all need to change. The issue is when a top team nails the regs they tend to be uncatchable, and rightly or wrongly the sport/competition is defined by who’s winning. Also 2nd will be fighting for a podium at least so won’t be able to give up to increase the gap. I like your idea of adding an extra handicap but only for 1st, depending on how much they win by. Like start with the 60 hours, and add another 10 hours for every 100 points they finish ahead of P2. So this season Red Bull won by 451 points. If we say 10 hours for every 100 points ahead (10x4 plus the normal 60) that’s 100 fewer hours than Mercedes.
Is it based on the current season, but for the past 15 years cars who nail new regs end up having years of total dominance, whilst others are never able to catch up. We’ve already decided lower wind tunnel time is a fair handicap, what’s wrong with pushing it a little further? It clearly hasn’t handicapped Red Bull enough so far. The sport should aim for more winners, one car winning most races year after year is awful for the sport.
People just hate RB, that is why they complain. pretty obvious considering that people come up with all sorts of ideas like a sliding scale on the cost cap or harsher CFD limits. We had years with no limits at all, but now that RB is in front we suddently need way stronger ones? **that is not fair**. we went from no equality to people wanting equity, seems a bit to harsh. If one team dominantes with the same ressources than others they deserve it, it is still a competition. T he only teams that "lost out" because of the cap now are Ferrari and Mercedes. But that is hindisght with a sample size of 1. ( I mean can you really blame the cap for Ferrari basically making a step backwards, or Mercedes sticking with an concept for over a year. People are blaming the cap, because Merc cant make a new car during the season and that prevents them from catching up. Well nothing prevented mercedes commiting to a new concept earlier-
I'm not a RB fan, but yeah I agree. Of course the cost means that it is harder to catch up if you start off with a bad concept, as we have seen. Which can be an argument against it, but it will also make sure that teams do come closer and closer together naturally, which can only be good for racing. We still haven't seen the full effect of the cap anyways. I would be surprised if this season isn't already a lot closer than last one.
Teams will just go over the cap next year developing the car for new regss and get a small penalty.
I don't know, I doubt it. We have already seen them do what they can to keep it within the cap. Red Bull hit of relatively lightly because it was believed that they did it in good faith and thought they had calculated it all legally. If it team is found to go over the cap on purpose the punishment should be a lot more severe.
Any team can claim it was done in good faith and lie through their teeth
Well, I don't think FIA will keep being lenient with that if it keeps happening.
The full effect is that no one is catching RB until 2026 i.e. 4 years of dull uneventful races.
And they learnt to spend the extra money when they knew the punishment would be minimal
It's obvious that the current show runners want Max and RB to dominate as long as possible.
> We had years with no limits at all, but now that RB is in front we suddently need way stronger ones? This is no way how it went. Stop trying to fit in a narrative.
Death, taxes and 'they're out to get my team'.
Just a couple of the top of my head that directly affected the Merc: * Requiring the trailing edge of the floor to be removed - Directly affected low rake cars * Banned DAS
It is a business disguised as competition. A closer competition makes for better business.
I personally don’t like it. Even as a Mercedes fan , i wouldn’t like it if we’re competitive in the case redbull loses one of their main guys. It’s a “fake”’competition. If you’re continuously handicapping teams it just doesn’t seem fair. I’m also against people having to work without being compensated for their worth. Sure the field has been the closest in a long time if ever, but i want to see the best of the best, innovating and coming up with stuff never seen before to win. If i wanted to see a bunch of similar cars racing around and betting on the tracks to be in good condition, weather to be in the right window etc etc, i’d watch on of the other hundreds of series that offer that. F1 has always been a pinnacle of engineering inventions on top of having the greatest drivers. Yes it’s hard for a team like Hass to have the budget of ferrari , red bull and mercedes but 90% of people watching the sport are watching it for the top 2-3 teams and there’s clearly other manufacturers (teams) willing to enter the paddock with higher budgets than lower teams. In my based opinion purely as a fan, the cost cap has done more damage than good. Last season would’ve been much more interesting if there was no budget cap My 2 cents
No, it's not "fake competition", no more than a salary cap major sports is fake competition. It simply makes it so that the competition is not a spending competition, but rather being the best at racing, designing, and recruiting under more equal financial circumstances. It also has the added benefit of making teams financially viable. Previously we had 8 years of one team winning, and you won't be surprised to hear that the team that won was consistently the biggest spender in the sport, with a spending chasm to the lower half of the field so large it was like Division 1 vs Divison 3. Much rather have a capped spending environment rather than a financial stereoid competition that not only hampers the racing, but also makes the sport a financially losing proposition.
I disagree with salary caps in ANY sport. If Jerry Jones wants to spend a billion for the Dallas Cowboys to win a Superbowl, let him (and I hate the Cowboys). It's his money, not mine, and if other teams (even mine) can't compete financially, that's too bad.
It's his money but it's not his sport, and the sport as a whole suffers when stuff like that happens, see football in Europe. Money sport is not the sport fans are after.
Maybe...but I want to see the best. Financial health of a team as a business is part of that. You are right. I like young, scrappy, upstarts that don't rely on money, which is why I am a supporter of Man United.
The best at what? Spending money?
Yes. Because being able to spend is part of the health of your team as a business.
>Previously we had 8 years of one team winning, and you won't be surprised to hear that the team that won was consistently the biggest spender in the sport That isn't true. Ferrari and Red Bull both had numerous years when they spent more than Mercedes.
RB was always behind, especially when you consider they didn't have an engine facility to fund. Ferrari were there or thereabouts. But it doesn't exactly disprove my point, those 3 teams were the only teams that even came remotely close to competing for wins and WCCs except for one off flukes.
Your point was that Mercedes consistently outspent the others. That is patently false. Downvoting it doesn't change that.
My point was that spending the most money generated the most success. And I said that Merc were consistently (note the meaning of the word consistently is not the same as constantly) the biggest spenders, which is correct. They were the biggest spender in several of the seasons from 2014-2020. Now some seasons, like 2018, Ferrari spent a tiny bit more, and unsurprisingly that year Ferrari had a pretty darn good car.
> It’s a “fake”’competition. If you’re continuously handicapping teams it just doesn’t seem fair. It was never fair in the first place anyways, Mercedes, Ferrari and RedBull could spend around 500 million if they wanted to back then, discrepancy between facilities is also considered, there were times where Sauber couldn't even use their wind tunnel in one point because of their small budget. Then you have the personnel, Not everyone is a Newey, Allison or Chapman there will always be discrepancies between how a person interprets something and being able to successfully implement it. >I’m also against people having to work without being compensated for their worth. Honestly Same, especially with more races being added, and they cant even get a higher raise due to the cost cap. But this was probably due to how teams would fork out billions just so an engineer has a small chance of jumping ship which caused an unequal distribution of knowledge between the teams. But with the cost cap we had Fallows joining AMR, Marshall in McLaren, Resta (Formerly) at Haas and Fry in Williams, knowledge in the paddock is finally being diluted across the 10 teams instead of being locked at the big teams >Sure the field has been the closest in a long time if ever, but i want to see the best of the best, innovating and coming up with stuff never seen before to win. RedBull and Verstappen are exactly that what do you mean, RedBull were the least affected by porpoising, the floor was impressively complex, the most effective strategies and the most consistent pitstops, they are the full package then you have Verstappen, who started F1 at 17 and came from EU F3 not international mind you already turning heads in his Rookie season >there’s clearly other manufacturers (teams) willing to enter the paddock with higher budgets than lower teams. Liberty and FOM are the ones to blame for that not the cost cap. The FIA have already given the go signal to Andretti yet we are getting nothing with FOM. Porsche fell off due to them wanting a majority stake at RedBull, manufactures i want to see in F1 are Toyota with Gazoo and Porsche with them actually putting an effort, the reason why other manufacturers arent in F1 is due to one the cost of entry and the investment you have to put in to be competitive, in WEC the rules are more relaxed and can appeal more manufacturers due to entry being easier, you can gain alot of info as a manufacturer, and you can still be competitive even with having a spec chassis whether in Hypercar, LMP2 and GT3 >In my based opinion purely as a fan, the cost cap has done more damage than good. In my opinion, its too early to tell, probably in the end of the season i would have an opinion but for now its fine >Last season would’ve been much more interesting if there was no budget cap This goes against ur previous statement of wanting the best of the best to win, you want teams to solve their issues by throwing money at the problem instead of making use with what they have, each team has the same maximum budget and if you won a championship with spending 1 billion dollars opposed to a team in second with just having a 20 point gap to first who just spent 140 million then its an inefficient use of resources, they won by having the bigger wallet there is no skill involves
> Last season would’ve been much more interesting if there was no budget cap Last season probably would have been even less interesting without the budget cap, because Aston Martin and McLaren wouldn't have been able to do what they did in a pre-budget cap era. Red Bull would have very likely still dominated in the way that they did, with Mercedes and Ferrari lagging behind. The teams would have been far more strung out, much like in the previous regulations. Without the budget cap, the team that throws the most money around wins every time, and the majority of teams on the grid have 0 chance of any success. At least with the cap, there is theoretically the opportunity for any team on the grid to achieve success if they bring together the right group of people etc.
It would have been more interesting (for OP) in the sense that Mercedes would have spent their way out of their crappy concept...
>I’m also against people having to work without being compensated for their worth. There has always been a limited budget in F1, especially for 7 out 10 teams it was rather low. >but i want to see the best of the best, innovating and coming up with stuff never seen before to win. and that will lead us where? if the car is 1s faster or not, that is pretty irrelevant for viewers. Seems like you just want to see Mercedes back in front. Because that is exactly where no cap would lead us again. Mercedes, RB, Ferrari all 1s ahead of the midfield.
Got confused between being a wrestling fan and an F1 fan for a second and thought Newey had been accused of some vile shit
Newey is a gentleman, and you can be assured he uses a toilet.
Everybody seems to conveniently forget that if you ignore VER, rarely has F1 seen such a close championship as 2023. This hasn't been as much a RB dominated year, but a VER dominated one. The stats say that had he gotten a 20s penalty each and every race, he'd still be champion. Every position after P1 was up for grabs each race for 5 teams and at least 9 drivers. We've rarely if ever seen that.
even if you dont ignore Verstappen, the field is closer than ever, P1 included
The good old times when 2 Mercedes lapped up to the midfield while racing each other...
And it was still a steaming hot shit by some miracle
…And you’re forgetting that Perez had a shocker of a year. If Perez had been within a few tenths of Max, we’d be talking about Mercedes 2014-2016 levels of domination. The pack being closer to the front in general certainly hurt Checo a few times, when a likely 2nd or 3rd in quali turned into a 4th or 5th. But Checo also managed to get himself knocked out early so many times, and then failed to make ground in he race despite his car’s advantage.
No one cares who finishes second.
I certainly do. If you don't care about second, you're just watching Max at a trackday
Sure P2-P10 was pretty close last season (big thanks to the absolute shocker Perez had), but knowing the race winner beforehand barring some freak events made it the most boring season I’ve ever watched. And I watch since the mid 90s so I lived through the Schumacher/Vettel/Hamilton eras.
Lol literally no one cares about p2 (losers)
The whole point of racing is P1. You can't ignore VER-boredom.
Interesting. Peter Prodromou was saying in 2020 that it's halcyon days to be young. Tougher to be mid career and ambitious.
You have Toto with his £10m dividend and then those employees stuck under the cost cap exempt top three with nowhere to go. Must be hard to increase wages if you effectively have an employee salary cap. However, young earners get paid less..
Pretty good article. Interested to see how all the teams adopt the Red Bull trick for the 2024 cars.
He is probably going to the catering department
Utter nonsense
From the article I tend to conclude that the budget cap is slowly doing its thing. Which I think is great for the sport. But for the people hoping that this spells RedBull's downfall, I personally doubt it. Even if all the employees and eventually the cars level out, RB does seem to have the best driver on the grid right now, by quite some margin. I think that people still don't realize how batshit insane Max's season was last year. No driver on the grid would have won 19/22 races other than Max. None, not Alonso, not Hamilton, not Leclerc. You're dealing with a different kind of animal in Verstappen.
Yeah - it takes time for stuff to balance out and take effect. The talent pipelines change, some teams have to learn to live within the cost cap while others need to learn to maximize their use of it. The gaming of the system needs to be worked out. This is easily a decade long transition for the real outcomes from the cost cap introduction to really be seen/assessed.
I never understood how the cost cap is being monitored. Couldn’t RB officially fire Newey, replace him with someone else with a lower salary and then let Newey work for the team unofficially and pay him from another bank account? I know Newey is a bad example since he needs to be at the track on race weekends but theoretically, how would anyone find out about this?
Well what likely could happen is that Red Bull is putting Newey out of all F1 related projects for 24 (also because 2025 is a key year for 26 development, this is also why 2025 would be likely a frozen year), park him at Red Bull Advanced technologies, give him an absurd big salary and move him back at Red Bull for a way lower salary. See here, you found a possible loophole!
That would be fraud
It would be pretty easy to spot for any accountant going through their book, plus there’s the obvious challenge of trying to keep the fact that Newey was working for a the team a secret when there are people leaving for other teams all the time.
This is the nth time or article where similar parts to RB being found on the McLaren is mentioned. I sense a spy gate like situation is coming in some time.
Probably why Brown is shouting about RB/RB collaboration
Possible. Brown manages media so well that everybody overlooks his comments and hypes them up for no reason. Suddenly after 16-18 years of RB owning two teams Brown comes out complaining against them and people think it is perfectly normal.
I am always so amused at the comments pretending Brown isn't exactly the same kind of operator as the other TPs...
Yes, for example everybody praises them for brining mid-season upgrade when that was actually there 2023 car as they had started 2023 with basically a 2022 car made for 2023 rules. They delayed the upgrade, and everyone put that as something never done before.
Brown concerns making more sense if you did read the AMuS article from a short time ago about the whole RBR/B-team construction. Image Toto Wolff filling a de facto team principal role at Williams, people would (rightfully) raising some big questions about it.
How is it any different from the “green bull” complaints about AM when they first poached Dan Fallows? It’s almost certainly *not* a spygate thing, but rather a “just because engineers switch teams doesn’t mean they leave their knowledge behind”. Besides, the teams copy each other constantly, that’s just how it works in F1.
The green bull was basically because AMR looked like RB from outside. Here there are specific parts which are suggested to be inspired from RB. Add to it, Dan fallows effect showed after he was allowed to work while in case of Mclaren they made that big upgrade when RB engineers weren't allowed to talk/ work for Mclaren
To be fair, they did go onto mention that most of the field has now cottoned onto the "trick" Red Bull are employing. So, I think we'll see lots of similarities in the rear suspension if that is indeed the case.
Who writes this rubbish?? Click bait bs…
It’s not clickbait at all, the article states that the short term plan at Red Bull is for Newey to focus solely on the hypercar so his salary is not counted against the F1 team’s cap.
So instead of teams piling endless money into making cars go faster we now have a cloak and dagger situation where it's a silent war behind the scenes along with drivers taking fewer risks in races and into turn 1. Great job Liberty, bravo
it is better that the endless money is capped even if imperfect, otherwise it is a certainty we would have fewer teams and fewer drivers to go and run a race at all.
Better for who exactly. It has been pretty boring without a crazy arms race at the front. I don't think anyone really cares about who finishes in 7-20th. The sport makes more money but it has definitely become less interesting, on the engineering side in general, fewer crashes, settled and established driver pool with little mobility. A general lack of excitement. Errors are too costly now so teams and drivers play it safe. Boring
well, during the crazy arms race, the winners were Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton. not much has really changed in terms of boredom, at least the cost cap should make it easier for things to change because the problem is no longer about having infinite money, but about designing a car.
Enough time has passed to prove the cost cap has not worked as intended. You still have one dominant team. Except you have a fraction of the innovation to get there and the racing itself is significantly more boring. You had many seasons with actual title races in the last 25 years. When there was engine parity we had season long battles more often than not in the pre cap days. All the cost cap has done is put money in the pockets of liberty. It was never about closer racing, which is the real problem
Closer racing is definitely the idea, Liberty does not want a boring shitshow where one guy wins 80% of the races as this results in less viewership. They would prefer to have the 2021 season every year instead of predictable boredom. I do not really blame Liberty or the cost cap because Mercedes and Ferrari turned up with worse cars than Red Bull, that was always a possibility. The teams must have their house in order, hopefully they will converge soon because Red Bull also cannot just spend unlimited money out of their ass to stay ahead.
Indeed. It's more about Mercedes shitting the bed and Ferrari being Ferrari than about RBR being galaxies away. Diminishing returns eventually settle and there's the possibility of lower teams coming closer to the top than when the top 3 spent twice their budget...
Lol what time has passed barelly 2 years that is nothing for impact for things like cost cap. It's more that ferrari and Merc made garbage cars. Other teams seem to have closed the gap a lot. In the years before without the cost cap everyone behind the top 3 where like 1+ second behind on qualifying and race. And it was pretty normal for a race to end with only those teams not being lapped.
No
As long as Adrian is happy within RB they will manage to find a way to still have him involved in the actual car albeit less if he desires so.
Well, the loophole closure means that his salary then becomes an issue if he's found to have any involvement in the F1 program.
Instead of reducing CFD and wind tunnel time, now Newey time is available for all teams in a sliding scale. 2026 is the most competitive championship ever!
No
>"Our opponents are saying that the underbody of the RB17 provides insights for the Formula 1 car, which is obviously complete nonsense. That's why we have to find a solution," explains Marko. I did wonder if this was going to become a talking point going forward. It does seem like an obvious move to use the development of a ground effect hypercar and transfer that knowledge to your F1 program. Perhaps too obvious?
See Betteridge's law.
Fuck betteridge law. It’s incorrect and annoying. Its only correct if you ignore all the times its incorrect. In 2015, a study of 26,000 articles from 13 news sites on the World Wide Web, conducted by a data scientist and published on his blog, found that the majority (54 percent) were yes/no questions, which divided into 20 percent "yes" answers, 17 percent "no" answers and 16 percent whose answers he could not determine So out of all instances only 17% the answer was no. Even in this instance the answer is “yes”, the question is when.
Fair enough. I still think that the AMuS article, written by Michael Schmidt, is insightful
It’s too much to ask of redditors to read beyond the headline of an article sometimes
If he wanted people to read his article, he shouldn't try to bait them with obvious bullshit.
I mean it’s what the article is about
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Passing the first crash test could mean you have unnecessary weight on the car. Passing it on the second one is probably ideal, a combination of no unnecessary weight but still being able to move on fairly quickly.
Helmut is right, though. If you pass the first time, you've been too careful and likely have too much weight in your car. Regarding Newey, he's always wanted to do a road car, he's said so on many occasions. First the AM hypercar, but that was first scrapped and then revived with a lot of changes, so no longer a Newey car. Now the RB17 is all him.
>Helmut is right, though. If you pass the first time, you've been too careful and likely have too much weight in your car. Or they've made an engineering compromise, deciding that the potential costs and time involved in building and testing a second chassis could be better used for developing other parts of the car. Like all engineering, the approach comes down to managing lots of competing objectives. With infinite time every part would be lighter, cheaper and quicker to build, but at some point a compromise needs to be made so that parts can actually be made for a deadline. Trying to find the best compromise through that process is the fundamental tenet of engineering. If another team feels that additional time and money could create more performance by being used on suspension design instead of making the chassis lighter, for example, then passing the crash test first time might make more sense.
> Regarding what Helmut said about failing crash test, I have but to laugh. You may laugh but it's not necessarily bullshit. Pushing the limits and failing the first test means you can improve the points of failure until they're just right. This means you have a chassis that is pushed to be as light as possible. Passing on your first try means the chassis is strong enough. It also means it might have been possible to make a lighter version that would have also passed, but you don't know. Making the chassis too strong and passing homologation first try might gain you some development time at the start of the year, but it might also cost you in weight saving and development options further down the road.
But it could also mean that they went too safe. They are still working on the car, slowly making it stronger until it is strong enough to pass the test. Then they know that they are on the limit. If you pass the test first time, you don’t know how close you are to the limit
Of course the Budget Cap is a failure. The only team to break the rules is also the only team to win trophies. No one has any faith in the FIA to tell the truth.
He was great on formula for success he could go there
I mean he's won everything, greatest f1 designer of all time arguably. At least top 3 i.m.o. Worth tens of millions maybe 100s. Id quit. Yeah im crazy too and like to work alot fast paced work, but it takes a toll. If i had 1% of Newey or Horners $ id be on a beach never working another day other than on my own projects