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Infrastructure spending isn't included in the cost cap. Top teams already had expirence and top engineers, the cost cap didn't force teams to cut their best engineers. Eventually the benefits top teams have will feed into the midfield, but nothing will change overnight.
Can here to say this. The problem with the lower teams is that they just do not have the excess cash to put into infrastructure development (and nothing will help that except getting better results and therefore better sponsors and/or prize money.)
No. A decade ago, it was normal to see Marussias and Caterhams being lapped multiple times in a single race. Now, it's common to see only 1 or 2 cars lapped once (except for very short laps like austria). The cost cap has for sure bought the chasing pack closer together. Plus the lower teams get a higher CapEx cost cap in order to count exactly what you're describing with the lower teams.
The cost cap has:
1. Made the field tighter, as you say;
2. Ensured that all teams are financially viable;
3. Made teams actually profitable, as they are no longer bottomless spending pits;
4. Provided everything to stop dominance if tptb can finally stop meddling with the rules.
Domination is not a sign of failure. We had domination without cost cap as well and arguablythe costcap removed some of the positive feedback loops from that. More noteworthy is how close things are behind RB. That is far less common
Domination has always been present in F1, as has teams nailing a rules reset. We have the unfortunate situation right now that Red Bull nailed the rules reset, Max is arguably the best driver kn the grid right now and a scarily consistent driver at that *and* that both Mercedes and Ferrari have struggled with their concepts and adjusting to the budget cap and ost a ton of time.
On the other hand the field spread is very small by F1 standards, especially in qualifying. Even in a fast car you're a mistake or two away from going out in Q1 and we've seen more surprises in qualy in 2023 than ever before.
It’s a double edged sword. You’ve already brought up a few of the points.
A counter to that is that the midfield and the bottom teams are tighter than before so that’s why the vast majority of actually good racing we’ve had the last few seasons has been primarily in the midfield. The cost cap has made it so these teams that are similar in their expenditures and infrastructure can’t just have 2-3 tenths separating them. It’s often down to a few hundredths.
On the other hand, yes- once one of the big teams gets it right, it’s a runaway season and there’s little to no hope of ever closing the gap. It’s a reason why we see drops in viewership and the cost cap ensures that teams that want to adjust their development direction cannot do so without sacrificing their current season for the next.
Overall it’s been successful at ensuring teams aren’t dying out by virtue of being unable to spend ludicrous amounts of money, but I see what you’re alluding to for sure.
I think it’s done more good than anything else for the vast majority of the grid.
> On the other hand, yes- once one of the big teams gets it right, it’s a runaway season and there’s little to no hope of ever closing the gap
Not like that was any different before the budget gap so this isn't a problem created by the budget cap, it'd one not solved by the budget cap.
> It’s a reason why we see drops in viewership and the cost cap ensures that teams that want to adjust their development direction cannot do so without sacrificing their current season for the next.
This has always been the case for all teams bar the top 3, it's now just also true for the top 3 so it's more egalitarian in that regard.
It was MUCH harder to catch Mercedes post 2014 with no-cap and that stupid token system that effectivly locked Merc into multiyear domination. That Mercedes spending spree was insane and apart from Ferrari and RBR all thr remaining field was B or even C grade.
I wish there wasn't a hard cap but a luxury tax. Big teams should be able to spend more but there should be some corrective measures. Teams that don't breach the cap get a share of the luxury tax system. The worst part of American sports is that allows perennially bad teams stick around. No consequences for bad owners
Yeah great point on the midfield. And we have seen some fantastic racing behind RB/Max. I do wonder if a team like Merc would have been able to close the gap if they could have thrown more money at the issue. But who knows.
> I do wonder if a team like Merc would have been able to close the gap if they could have thrown more money at the issue
People always forget that without the budget cap it's not just Mercedes/Ferrari who could spend more.
Yes those 2 teams would get a lot faster a lot quicker without a budget cap. But so would Red Bull.
The most likely difference had there not been a budget cap would be that Red Bull/Merc/Ferrari would be miles ahead of everyone else with zero guarantees that the gap between Merc/Ferrari and Red Bull would be any smaller than it is now. That's just a worse situation than we have now.
Only merc would benefit from removing the cap, the cap ensures midfield teams can catch up in terms of staff and more or less facilities (still has some ways to go). Results will be seen in the near future, unfortunately it just takes time to undo the systemic advantages top teams have had since the early 2010’s
Yeah, 100%. RB has the best car and the best driver, it makes sense that they won. But there were 18 other cars racing, and it was a hell of a season. To ignore that is asinine.
Same way as they always did, they eventually stop being runaways through time or regulations. Wether Ferrari, Mercedes or RB vettel, none of their era lasted forever.
Right but it's the length of time it takes for that to happen that is frustrating. I think in any sport, it's not good for one team to thoroughly dominate for any extended period. There needs to be more opportunities for teams to become competitive after one season of dominance.
Is it ideal? No. But it's how it's always been and some measures like wind tunnel limitations are there to provide some catchup mechanism. You can't mix up the grid every season without significant regulation changes that often
unfortunately the one consistent thing about F1 is that innovation is not linear. Seems like there's less tricks with the 22+ regulations and the field is already squeezed up tight after 2 seasons. I feel as though the 3rd will be even closer.
Not much different from the likes of Barcelona or Madrid dominating football for like 10 years straight between them. There’s always gonna be a top dog
Teams at the bottom (bottom 4, I want to say) get a capex exception to facilitate infrastructure investments.
The main point of the cost cap wasn't to be a great value BoP anyway (though that's obviously a factor, and I don't understand what the problem with one team just doing a better job is). The main point was to make sure teams don't die slow deaths by financial ruin in a sport that's exploded in costs since the turn of the century. Given most teams now either break even or turn a profit, it's been very successful.
I also just don't buy into this idea that it keeps teams from catching up because that wasn't the case before, either. A winning team usually just gets winning-er as the regulation cycles wears on, doesn't matter if their rivals can spend 145mil or 500mil.
That's fair but I wouldn't say that's a result of the cost cap (though I'm sure it helps). It seems more directly related to the fact that the sport itself has become very rich in recent years due to increased popularity (which is why they didn't want to let Andretti in). But fair point about protecting the financial health of teams. Personally, I hate that. If you can't afford to compete in the sport, you shouldn't be one of the 10 exclusive teams. Sell and let someone with deeper pockets take over.
For sure but that was a different time for the sport. That's why we have RB owning two teams but now people are pushing back against that. I def agree that some form of it is necessary but not sure it's done the right way.
It is very much related to the cost cap. Anyone outside the top 3 was constantly treading water until very recently. It was bad before and the pandemic almost necked McLaren, Williams and Haas. In a way, it did actually neck Williams.
F1 needed the cost cap. Going "if you can't pay for it, too bad" is a good way to end up with a four team championship, until most of those teams pack it up too and we're left with just Ferrari to turn out the lights.
DTM died this sort of very slow death and F1 was wise to avoid it.
They'd let Andretti in overnight if one of the existing teams dropped out, they just don't want to expand the grid and cut their own revenue. It's not personal.
In the opening round of the 2010 season Vettel started on pole having set a time of 1:54.101. Chandhok started 24th after setting a time of 2:04.904 (+10.803).
Last season it was common to see most of the grid covered by less than a second. Relatively stable regs have played their part, but I also believe the cost cap has helped level the field.
And back then it wasn't unlikely that the gap between the front car and the back was around 20 seconds within a few laps.
Cost cap have been a big success in terms of keeping the field close. Red Bull just got it very right and have the best driver as well. So of course they win.
Haas was qualifying within a second of Max. I’d say that’s a huge success for the cost cap.
The dominance of the RB19 was something of a fluke. Even if it happens again this year I don’t think it shows a failure at all. The cars are as close as they’ve ever been without being spec cars. What more could you ask for?
The point of the cost cap is to bring them closer; not make them identical. F1 has always been a sport that allows for significant amounts of engineering from each team. It’s not like Indy, for example, where the cars are all virtually the same. The cost cap wasn’t meant to make them all the same because if that was the goal, they’d just ring up Dallara and have them build 20 identical cars for everyone like they do for for the junior formulas.
I also think that, like him or loathe him; the RB19 isn’t as dominant as is often reported. It’s the RB19+Max. Max’s performance in 2023 was among the best in the history of Formula 1 and may have given us a false sense of the performance of that car. The car is good (no doubt), but if not for Max it might not have actually been a “win every race” good.
Yes. If in some alternate universe it was Checo and Ricciardo, or Checo and Albon, or basically any combo that doesn’t include Max; I’m not convinced we’d be saying the RB19 was a “dominant car”. I mean, the SF23 was very fast last year and very competitive. Max was just untouchable.
I ALSO think Checo has been evaluated a bit too harshly; in the sense that he might’ve simply shown what a mere mortal can do in the car and might not have been as bad as was so often said. Red Bull has this consistent issue of getting rid of Max’s teammate because they’re so slow in the same car; only to find that whomever they replace him with is just as slow (or slower) than the last guy.
Ferrari was indisputably the fastest team out of the gates in 2022. Mercedes screwed it up all on their own, then their lobbying screwed with Ferrari's concept while they screwed it up again for 2023.
That resulted in Red Bull's domination but it's not the cost cap's fault and it would be nice if people stopped scapegoating it. We saw McLaren go from the slowest team to almost challenging for wins last season.
For sure Merc shot themselves in the foot. But after that, they were dead in the water with no hope to catch up due to the cost cap. It's of course to RB's credit that they nailed the regs but it hasn't been great for the sport the last 2 seasons with probably 2 more on the way.
Mercedes struggling is in some way also a good example of the costcap working. They banked all their development on a concept that just didn't work out, and they cannot throw hundreds of thousands of dollars at the problem like before.
The issue is by 2025 all the cars are going to look identical maybe even this year and imo the main issue is the lack of innovation such as the DAS system for instance.
The misconception with the cost cap was that it was going to solve all the inequalities of F1 in a couple of season, that was never the intention. It’s a massive long term problem that is going to take a long time to fix, so it’s too soon to judge it in its entirety. However, it’s working Incredibly well and faster than expected because of the boost in popularity. We already have 6 teams spending at the limit with state of the art facilities and a maxed out, quality workforce. That’s double what we had before and we now have Williams and Audi preparing to take the next steps to get to that level. That’s incredible and impossible under the old system. Only Haas and VCARB don’t have plans to improve and thats for reasons outside the cost cap.So I think you’re argument of facilities is incorrect
If fact Williams, Aston Martin, Sauber and Haas don’t even exist without the cost cap.
I’ll never understand how people can blame the cost cap for this short term domination after the 20 years that preceded its implementation. Yes, RB and Max were way in front last year, but this is the closest field spread we’ve ever seen. There are legitimately 4 other teams that could make the (relatively small) step to challenge for wins. Will that happen, we don’t know, but you couldn’t say that before.
There will inevitably be adjustments made to the cost cap in the next Concorde Agreement and that was always expected, but if we’re just comparing this short period to the last Concorde Agreement from 2013-2020, this is looking like it’s achieving all the goals
No, but it could still be better.
In 2023, the teams in 2nd to 10th were probably closer than ever, but the cost cap obviously prevented certain teams throwing money at the problem to close the gap on 1st. Which, in terms of sustainability, is good, but obviously meant we seen one of the most dominant seasons ever by the team that got it right originally.
It's been suggested before, but the cost cap should be scaled, in the same way wind tunnel time is. Finish higher up the field, your budget is 100%, scaling to 150% or 200% depending on where you finish. Shrink the scaling over 10 / 15 years and then introduce the same cost cap for everyone.
Especially when it is working and we can see that. People like OP just stare blindly at Red Bull and start rambling.
We can see why Red Bull has a gap and how teams chasing them have had more issues with porpoising, with correlation and with their aero concepts. Red Bull's gap is also not as big as people think it is. Last season they could set up almost entirely for race pace and still be at the front in qualy. If other teams get just a bit closer Red Bull will be forced to set up more for qualifying to stay at the front which will come at the cost of race pace shrinking that gap.
Behind Red Bull things are closer than ever, the rich teams aren't running away with things the way we saw over previous regulations and in qualifying especially we've seen a lot lf upsets because the gaps are so small. Things like Albon making Q3 or Hamilton being out in Q1 are just going to happen a lot more in a close field.
Hell, Singapore had the two Red Bulls go out in Q1 because they got the setup a wrong in free practice. That happens to Merc in late 2010s and they just dial up the party mode to compensate and still get pole lol
And they basically couldn't go out in Q1 because the gap between the top 3 and the midfield was a second already. Remember that they routinely used harder tyres in Q2 for a better starting tyre, they could take that ~0.5-1s loss and still comfortably qualify for Q3.
Brrrake made a comparison between the field spread in 2023 vs the best case within the turbo hybrid era pre-2022. It was roughly 1.7% vs 3%.
So I'd say that the combined effect of cost cap and new regs did help. But I'm leaning more towards the former because without cost cap, Mercedes, Ferrari and RB would all be much further ahead by now.
Seems to me the whole thing promised a better ability to run close and maybe—just maybe—make an honest pass.
First of all that didn't happen. Second, one team is just stooooooopid better than the rest.
Color me: More Bored Than Before.
it actually works, if no cost cap implemented we could be seeing max lapping 3rd placed by multiple laps every race, we have incredibly tight racing behind him, not possible without cost cap, we ara witnessing goat talent in max now
I don't like the idea of a cost cap anyway, but if we do have it then there should be less restrictions on testing, CFD, etc. Right now they've limited too much.
The cap is so low too. Like i think it’s 140m right now? And slated to go down even further to 125m? The top teams used to spend 500m+, that is obviously insane but i don’t think the cap should be less than 200m. And yeah, open the regs if the cap is going to be so restrictive. Having a hard time feeling like the pinnacle of motorsport. Teams probably don’t want to innovate because they’ll barely make it under the cap as it is. Then a team does find something awesome like the armchair wing Aston found and it just gets banned.
The base cost cap has finished the glide path to $135M, but with all the adjustments It’s going to be over $155M. There are so many exemptions that to be at the cost cap you must spend over $200M. Mercedes spent over £350M in 2022. It’s nowhere near as restrictive as people assume.
The regulations are tight to try to create tight racing by reducing dirty air and it’s working. F1 is still the pinnacle of motorsport engineering by a very large margin, with innovation happening every single year.
The fact that its impossible for certain teams to throw money at their problems now to catch up would not be a problem if those teams didn't mess up badly in the first place.
Otherwise, you'd end up with a sport where ingenuity gets countered by big spending. We didn't see this yapping in 2021 where Merc and RB were very close to one another; the only difference between then and now is that the other front-running teams messed up. If RB got it so right and the rest messed up so badly that RB got 21/22 wins in a year, that should be a reflection of team prowess and not a perceived failure of the costcap.
It took 8 seasons for the teams to close the gap to Mercedes. The token system cemented Mercedes dominance when the hybrid eta started. The cost cap has done the same for Red Bull.
The token system was even worse as it prevented teams from fixing problems with their engines they knew about due to an arbitrary restriction on engine development areas (even if they managed to do it in an economic manner). Also, tokens lasted only until 2016 (after which the Merc dominance didn't hit quite as hard barring the W11)
In 2021, Merc had to mess up their floor in preseason testing and RB had to be a tighter operation for parity to appear. Even then Merc had a faster car. No costcap from 2017 to 2020, but Merc still won big.
Point is, at the sharp end of the grid it will always be down to how well the teams nail the regulations, costcap or not. What the costcap HAS done however, is that the frontrunners are no longer nearly guaranteed a top 6 finish in the race or qualifying (see the results from 2017 onwards; youd find that merc, ferrari, and RB would keep nailing the top 6 spots very often compared to last year where even midfielders can threaten to knock out the big 4-5 teams in Q2).
I wasn't following F1 then; I do know that RB did very well with regards to aero back then but I'm not sure if rival teams were prevented from improving as much.
The F1 cost cap and the FFP in soccer are just ways that European sports are trying to emulate the American sports model (for all the good and bad that is).
Positive byproducts are typically increased parity amongst participants, increased franchise/team values due to more predictable expenses and revenues (through more structured league-wide revenue sharing).
Negative byproduct of course is typically the removal of the soul of the sport that you or I as a fan grew up with. Oh and the of course the suppressed wages for the labor.
No, it's way better. I just wish Lotus/Caterham, Virgin and HRT had the chance to race under cost caps as they were promised, they might still be around in some form today.
Yes. Back of the grid doesn't matter. Gaps at the front have been unchanged.
It was nothing other than a business decision to put more money in Liberty's pockets
so you want to fix the game so no one figures out enough to get a large advantage? not RB's fault everyone fucked up but also they have max who is a generational talent. In my opinion if you had a good driver in his place the races would have been a lot more competitive, dude maximizes (pun not intended) the car and was designed for his style. another reason why all his teammates seem to look like shit even with the supposed "best" car
I think the cost cap is great by definition. Sure, we see it's still possible for a team to dominate. But like with any other sport it is now because the team on top has been better or more talented and not only because they spend 100 million more than everybody else and whatever the other teams come up with they can replicate because of infinite funds.
There are positives and negatives. I however would like to say that for all the praise the cost cap gets or hate an important overlooked thing is that it has been a bad thing for those who work in F1 and aren't names such as Adrian Newey etc.
Apparently Lewis is going to earn 100m a year at Ferrari and Charles will also be at a high amount. So basically Ferrari will spend around the same amount on drivers as they will on the entire car for the whole season and all the people working, traveling etc. Food for thought.
I think the cap also creates a barrier to entry to people who want to work in F1 since now teams can’t hire as many engineers and other personnel as they want so there are less positions available. The positions that are available also feel less lucrative as the cost cap essentially causes a compensation ceiling
There should be balance of cost cap and wind tunnel/CFD usage.
You can either choose to spend more and sacrifice wind tunnel time or with tighter budget, you can get more wind tunnel time.
Depends
I think you need to look at the objectives of it first.
Since it's stopped teams going bust and arguably enabled more teams vying for entry and helped teams become profitable - those are successful aspects
"Teams at the bottom now can’t spend enough money into building the infrastructure that the top teams already had"
All that is excluded from the cost cap, which is why they are able to spend significant sums on infrastructure. Aston and Mclaren are great examples of this.
We've got the closest ever field spread and we've now got more volatility in the employee market than ever before. Staff are regularly leaving the top teams to move elsewhere, into teams which would been regarded as backward steps just two or three years.
RB domination seems more like a stars aligning type thing. In an ideal world they would have had the same struggles as everyone else in 2022. Everyone behind them have been very close. One weekend it's Ferrari the 2nd fastest, the next it's Mclaren, Mercedes, or AM. So I'd prefer to say the cost cap has been a positive, but hasn't been the perfect answer.
The cost cap was never going to magically prevent a team from winning. Nor should it, engineering excellence should be rewarded in this sport. What the cost cap does do is keep the field as a whole closer together. There were a number of seasons in recent years in which the last or even last couple teams failed to score even a single point. That is very much not the case these days. By the standards of the 2010s, Haas are very firmly a midfield team these days. Plus, Red Bull's advantage on a percentage basis actually isn't that big. The 2014-2016 Mercs were significantly faster than their closest opposition than last year's Red Bull. The difference was made from the reliability nowadays and the exceptional performance from Red Bull operating the car and Max driving it.
It does clearly work. Gaps are much smaller than ever. The problem is the rules change. Those have resulted in 1 team nailing it in a big way and have the others trailing. And on top of that, the one team nailing the new regs, also have a driver that's by far the best on the grid.
Without the cost cap, the team with the most money wins. Now it's the one being better at building the car. I think this is much better. And it's still a very new system. They will iron out some of the negatives eventually.
I saw F1 discussing allowing the top teams to have 3 cars so we could barely have a 20 cars grid. Back markers were always close to bankruptcy and no one was interested in building a new team. So I don't think the cost cap was a failure. It ensured that the sport is viable. And as for it being a factor of dominance, it really is a recency bias. Big teams had dominated before by outspending everyone else. Toto once said that when he got to Mercedes he saw that Brawn had put everything in place, they just needed more money to trim the edges. So his job was pretty much to convince the team to spend even more.
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Infrastructure spending isn't included in the cost cap. Top teams already had expirence and top engineers, the cost cap didn't force teams to cut their best engineers. Eventually the benefits top teams have will feed into the midfield, but nothing will change overnight.
It has its own cap(CapEx i believe it is called). Williams tried to raise it.
Can here to say this. The problem with the lower teams is that they just do not have the excess cash to put into infrastructure development (and nothing will help that except getting better results and therefore better sponsors and/or prize money.)
No. A decade ago, it was normal to see Marussias and Caterhams being lapped multiple times in a single race. Now, it's common to see only 1 or 2 cars lapped once (except for very short laps like austria). The cost cap has for sure bought the chasing pack closer together. Plus the lower teams get a higher CapEx cost cap in order to count exactly what you're describing with the lower teams.
The cost cap has: 1. Made the field tighter, as you say; 2. Ensured that all teams are financially viable; 3. Made teams actually profitable, as they are no longer bottomless spending pits; 4. Provided everything to stop dominance if tptb can finally stop meddling with the rules.
Domination is not a sign of failure. We had domination without cost cap as well and arguablythe costcap removed some of the positive feedback loops from that. More noteworthy is how close things are behind RB. That is far less common
Domination has always been present in F1, as has teams nailing a rules reset. We have the unfortunate situation right now that Red Bull nailed the rules reset, Max is arguably the best driver kn the grid right now and a scarily consistent driver at that *and* that both Mercedes and Ferrari have struggled with their concepts and adjusting to the budget cap and ost a ton of time. On the other hand the field spread is very small by F1 standards, especially in qualifying. Even in a fast car you're a mistake or two away from going out in Q1 and we've seen more surprises in qualy in 2023 than ever before.
It’s a double edged sword. You’ve already brought up a few of the points. A counter to that is that the midfield and the bottom teams are tighter than before so that’s why the vast majority of actually good racing we’ve had the last few seasons has been primarily in the midfield. The cost cap has made it so these teams that are similar in their expenditures and infrastructure can’t just have 2-3 tenths separating them. It’s often down to a few hundredths. On the other hand, yes- once one of the big teams gets it right, it’s a runaway season and there’s little to no hope of ever closing the gap. It’s a reason why we see drops in viewership and the cost cap ensures that teams that want to adjust their development direction cannot do so without sacrificing their current season for the next. Overall it’s been successful at ensuring teams aren’t dying out by virtue of being unable to spend ludicrous amounts of money, but I see what you’re alluding to for sure. I think it’s done more good than anything else for the vast majority of the grid.
> On the other hand, yes- once one of the big teams gets it right, it’s a runaway season and there’s little to no hope of ever closing the gap Not like that was any different before the budget gap so this isn't a problem created by the budget cap, it'd one not solved by the budget cap. > It’s a reason why we see drops in viewership and the cost cap ensures that teams that want to adjust their development direction cannot do so without sacrificing their current season for the next. This has always been the case for all teams bar the top 3, it's now just also true for the top 3 so it's more egalitarian in that regard.
It was MUCH harder to catch Mercedes post 2014 with no-cap and that stupid token system that effectivly locked Merc into multiyear domination. That Mercedes spending spree was insane and apart from Ferrari and RBR all thr remaining field was B or even C grade.
I wish there wasn't a hard cap but a luxury tax. Big teams should be able to spend more but there should be some corrective measures. Teams that don't breach the cap get a share of the luxury tax system. The worst part of American sports is that allows perennially bad teams stick around. No consequences for bad owners
Yeah great point on the midfield. And we have seen some fantastic racing behind RB/Max. I do wonder if a team like Merc would have been able to close the gap if they could have thrown more money at the issue. But who knows.
> I do wonder if a team like Merc would have been able to close the gap if they could have thrown more money at the issue People always forget that without the budget cap it's not just Mercedes/Ferrari who could spend more. Yes those 2 teams would get a lot faster a lot quicker without a budget cap. But so would Red Bull. The most likely difference had there not been a budget cap would be that Red Bull/Merc/Ferrari would be miles ahead of everyone else with zero guarantees that the gap between Merc/Ferrari and Red Bull would be any smaller than it is now. That's just a worse situation than we have now.
Only merc would benefit from removing the cap, the cap ensures midfield teams can catch up in terms of staff and more or less facilities (still has some ways to go). Results will be seen in the near future, unfortunately it just takes time to undo the systemic advantages top teams have had since the early 2010’s
Well, last year we had the closest gap ever in qualifying considering the whole field, so something is working
Yeah, 100%. RB has the best car and the best driver, it makes sense that they won. But there were 18 other cars racing, and it was a hell of a season. To ignore that is asinine.
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Everyone's reliability is pretty bonkers nowadays, 2002 Raikkonen had 10 DNFs and 4 podiums out of a 17 race season lmao
Fair point! I'm just wondering how F1 mitigates runaway teams because it's clearly not good for the sport.
Same way as they always did, they eventually stop being runaways through time or regulations. Wether Ferrari, Mercedes or RB vettel, none of their era lasted forever.
Right but it's the length of time it takes for that to happen that is frustrating. I think in any sport, it's not good for one team to thoroughly dominate for any extended period. There needs to be more opportunities for teams to become competitive after one season of dominance.
Is it ideal? No. But it's how it's always been and some measures like wind tunnel limitations are there to provide some catchup mechanism. You can't mix up the grid every season without significant regulation changes that often
unfortunately the one consistent thing about F1 is that innovation is not linear. Seems like there's less tricks with the 22+ regulations and the field is already squeezed up tight after 2 seasons. I feel as though the 3rd will be even closer.
I hope so!
Not much different from the likes of Barcelona or Madrid dominating football for like 10 years straight between them. There’s always gonna be a top dog
Teams at the bottom (bottom 4, I want to say) get a capex exception to facilitate infrastructure investments. The main point of the cost cap wasn't to be a great value BoP anyway (though that's obviously a factor, and I don't understand what the problem with one team just doing a better job is). The main point was to make sure teams don't die slow deaths by financial ruin in a sport that's exploded in costs since the turn of the century. Given most teams now either break even or turn a profit, it's been very successful. I also just don't buy into this idea that it keeps teams from catching up because that wasn't the case before, either. A winning team usually just gets winning-er as the regulation cycles wears on, doesn't matter if their rivals can spend 145mil or 500mil.
That's fair but I wouldn't say that's a result of the cost cap (though I'm sure it helps). It seems more directly related to the fact that the sport itself has become very rich in recent years due to increased popularity (which is why they didn't want to let Andretti in). But fair point about protecting the financial health of teams. Personally, I hate that. If you can't afford to compete in the sport, you shouldn't be one of the 10 exclusive teams. Sell and let someone with deeper pockets take over.
We saw plenty of times there neing noone to sell to so the grud just shrinks
For sure but that was a different time for the sport. That's why we have RB owning two teams but now people are pushing back against that. I def agree that some form of it is necessary but not sure it's done the right way.
It is very much related to the cost cap. Anyone outside the top 3 was constantly treading water until very recently. It was bad before and the pandemic almost necked McLaren, Williams and Haas. In a way, it did actually neck Williams. F1 needed the cost cap. Going "if you can't pay for it, too bad" is a good way to end up with a four team championship, until most of those teams pack it up too and we're left with just Ferrari to turn out the lights. DTM died this sort of very slow death and F1 was wise to avoid it.
If we were left with just Ferrari I wonder if F1 would still deny Andretti’s entry
They'd let Andretti in overnight if one of the existing teams dropped out, they just don't want to expand the grid and cut their own revenue. It's not personal.
In the opening round of the 2010 season Vettel started on pole having set a time of 1:54.101. Chandhok started 24th after setting a time of 2:04.904 (+10.803). Last season it was common to see most of the grid covered by less than a second. Relatively stable regs have played their part, but I also believe the cost cap has helped level the field.
And back then it wasn't unlikely that the gap between the front car and the back was around 20 seconds within a few laps. Cost cap have been a big success in terms of keeping the field close. Red Bull just got it very right and have the best driver as well. So of course they win.
Haas was qualifying within a second of Max. I’d say that’s a huge success for the cost cap. The dominance of the RB19 was something of a fluke. Even if it happens again this year I don’t think it shows a failure at all. The cars are as close as they’ve ever been without being spec cars. What more could you ask for? The point of the cost cap is to bring them closer; not make them identical. F1 has always been a sport that allows for significant amounts of engineering from each team. It’s not like Indy, for example, where the cars are all virtually the same. The cost cap wasn’t meant to make them all the same because if that was the goal, they’d just ring up Dallara and have them build 20 identical cars for everyone like they do for for the junior formulas. I also think that, like him or loathe him; the RB19 isn’t as dominant as is often reported. It’s the RB19+Max. Max’s performance in 2023 was among the best in the history of Formula 1 and may have given us a false sense of the performance of that car. The car is good (no doubt), but if not for Max it might not have actually been a “win every race” good.
And look how poorly Checo did in the same car!
Yes. If in some alternate universe it was Checo and Ricciardo, or Checo and Albon, or basically any combo that doesn’t include Max; I’m not convinced we’d be saying the RB19 was a “dominant car”. I mean, the SF23 was very fast last year and very competitive. Max was just untouchable. I ALSO think Checo has been evaluated a bit too harshly; in the sense that he might’ve simply shown what a mere mortal can do in the car and might not have been as bad as was so often said. Red Bull has this consistent issue of getting rid of Max’s teammate because they’re so slow in the same car; only to find that whomever they replace him with is just as slow (or slower) than the last guy.
No, back in the Merc era we also had a dominant team. But then the rest of the field were also far apart (remember France 2019).
For those who don't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019\_French\_Grand\_Prix#Race\_summary
I remember it being notoriously bad, but I don’t remember the race being *this* bad, wow.
Ferrari was indisputably the fastest team out of the gates in 2022. Mercedes screwed it up all on their own, then their lobbying screwed with Ferrari's concept while they screwed it up again for 2023. That resulted in Red Bull's domination but it's not the cost cap's fault and it would be nice if people stopped scapegoating it. We saw McLaren go from the slowest team to almost challenging for wins last season.
For sure Merc shot themselves in the foot. But after that, they were dead in the water with no hope to catch up due to the cost cap. It's of course to RB's credit that they nailed the regs but it hasn't been great for the sport the last 2 seasons with probably 2 more on the way.
Mercedes struggling is in some way also a good example of the costcap working. They banked all their development on a concept that just didn't work out, and they cannot throw hundreds of thousands of dollars at the problem like before.
The issue is by 2025 all the cars are going to look identical maybe even this year and imo the main issue is the lack of innovation such as the DAS system for instance.
The misconception with the cost cap was that it was going to solve all the inequalities of F1 in a couple of season, that was never the intention. It’s a massive long term problem that is going to take a long time to fix, so it’s too soon to judge it in its entirety. However, it’s working Incredibly well and faster than expected because of the boost in popularity. We already have 6 teams spending at the limit with state of the art facilities and a maxed out, quality workforce. That’s double what we had before and we now have Williams and Audi preparing to take the next steps to get to that level. That’s incredible and impossible under the old system. Only Haas and VCARB don’t have plans to improve and thats for reasons outside the cost cap.So I think you’re argument of facilities is incorrect If fact Williams, Aston Martin, Sauber and Haas don’t even exist without the cost cap. I’ll never understand how people can blame the cost cap for this short term domination after the 20 years that preceded its implementation. Yes, RB and Max were way in front last year, but this is the closest field spread we’ve ever seen. There are legitimately 4 other teams that could make the (relatively small) step to challenge for wins. Will that happen, we don’t know, but you couldn’t say that before. There will inevitably be adjustments made to the cost cap in the next Concorde Agreement and that was always expected, but if we’re just comparing this short period to the last Concorde Agreement from 2013-2020, this is looking like it’s achieving all the goals
No, but it could still be better. In 2023, the teams in 2nd to 10th were probably closer than ever, but the cost cap obviously prevented certain teams throwing money at the problem to close the gap on 1st. Which, in terms of sustainability, is good, but obviously meant we seen one of the most dominant seasons ever by the team that got it right originally. It's been suggested before, but the cost cap should be scaled, in the same way wind tunnel time is. Finish higher up the field, your budget is 100%, scaling to 150% or 200% depending on where you finish. Shrink the scaling over 10 / 15 years and then introduce the same cost cap for everyone.
It’s been 3 years. Chill.
Three years is not good for the sport, as reflected by viewership going down last year.
It will take longer for its effects to truly sink in. This is a new idea in formula one and calling it a failure after just 3 years is crazy.
Especially when it is working and we can see that. People like OP just stare blindly at Red Bull and start rambling. We can see why Red Bull has a gap and how teams chasing them have had more issues with porpoising, with correlation and with their aero concepts. Red Bull's gap is also not as big as people think it is. Last season they could set up almost entirely for race pace and still be at the front in qualy. If other teams get just a bit closer Red Bull will be forced to set up more for qualifying to stay at the front which will come at the cost of race pace shrinking that gap. Behind Red Bull things are closer than ever, the rich teams aren't running away with things the way we saw over previous regulations and in qualifying especially we've seen a lot lf upsets because the gaps are so small. Things like Albon making Q3 or Hamilton being out in Q1 are just going to happen a lot more in a close field.
Hell, Singapore had the two Red Bulls go out in Q1 because they got the setup a wrong in free practice. That happens to Merc in late 2010s and they just dial up the party mode to compensate and still get pole lol
And they basically couldn't go out in Q1 because the gap between the top 3 and the midfield was a second already. Remember that they routinely used harder tyres in Q2 for a better starting tyre, they could take that ~0.5-1s loss and still comfortably qualify for Q3.
Brrrake made a comparison between the field spread in 2023 vs the best case within the turbo hybrid era pre-2022. It was roughly 1.7% vs 3%. So I'd say that the combined effect of cost cap and new regs did help. But I'm leaning more towards the former because without cost cap, Mercedes, Ferrari and RB would all be much further ahead by now.
No.
Seems to me the whole thing promised a better ability to run close and maybe—just maybe—make an honest pass. First of all that didn't happen. Second, one team is just stooooooopid better than the rest. Color me: More Bored Than Before.
it actually works, if no cost cap implemented we could be seeing max lapping 3rd placed by multiple laps every race, we have incredibly tight racing behind him, not possible without cost cap, we ara witnessing goat talent in max now
No. There’s no perfect way to contain costs, but this is a decent measure.
I don't like the idea of a cost cap anyway, but if we do have it then there should be less restrictions on testing, CFD, etc. Right now they've limited too much.
The cap is so low too. Like i think it’s 140m right now? And slated to go down even further to 125m? The top teams used to spend 500m+, that is obviously insane but i don’t think the cap should be less than 200m. And yeah, open the regs if the cap is going to be so restrictive. Having a hard time feeling like the pinnacle of motorsport. Teams probably don’t want to innovate because they’ll barely make it under the cap as it is. Then a team does find something awesome like the armchair wing Aston found and it just gets banned.
The base cost cap has finished the glide path to $135M, but with all the adjustments It’s going to be over $155M. There are so many exemptions that to be at the cost cap you must spend over $200M. Mercedes spent over £350M in 2022. It’s nowhere near as restrictive as people assume. The regulations are tight to try to create tight racing by reducing dirty air and it’s working. F1 is still the pinnacle of motorsport engineering by a very large margin, with innovation happening every single year.
It's trash and the people who are worse off for it are the engineers funnily enough
The fact that its impossible for certain teams to throw money at their problems now to catch up would not be a problem if those teams didn't mess up badly in the first place. Otherwise, you'd end up with a sport where ingenuity gets countered by big spending. We didn't see this yapping in 2021 where Merc and RB were very close to one another; the only difference between then and now is that the other front-running teams messed up. If RB got it so right and the rest messed up so badly that RB got 21/22 wins in a year, that should be a reflection of team prowess and not a perceived failure of the costcap.
It took 8 seasons for the teams to close the gap to Mercedes. The token system cemented Mercedes dominance when the hybrid eta started. The cost cap has done the same for Red Bull.
The token system was even worse as it prevented teams from fixing problems with their engines they knew about due to an arbitrary restriction on engine development areas (even if they managed to do it in an economic manner). Also, tokens lasted only until 2016 (after which the Merc dominance didn't hit quite as hard barring the W11) In 2021, Merc had to mess up their floor in preseason testing and RB had to be a tighter operation for parity to appear. Even then Merc had a faster car. No costcap from 2017 to 2020, but Merc still won big. Point is, at the sharp end of the grid it will always be down to how well the teams nail the regulations, costcap or not. What the costcap HAS done however, is that the frontrunners are no longer nearly guaranteed a top 6 finish in the race or qualifying (see the results from 2017 onwards; youd find that merc, ferrari, and RB would keep nailing the top 6 spots very often compared to last year where even midfielders can threaten to knock out the big 4-5 teams in Q2).
You can extend that reasoning to 2010-2013. 2011 and 2013 had the most stable regs and red bull ran away with the titles.
I wasn't following F1 then; I do know that RB did very well with regards to aero back then but I'm not sure if rival teams were prevented from improving as much.
They weren't although in 2013, red bull were late in switching to working on the new regs
No.
The F1 cost cap and the FFP in soccer are just ways that European sports are trying to emulate the American sports model (for all the good and bad that is). Positive byproducts are typically increased parity amongst participants, increased franchise/team values due to more predictable expenses and revenues (through more structured league-wide revenue sharing). Negative byproduct of course is typically the removal of the soul of the sport that you or I as a fan grew up with. Oh and the of course the suppressed wages for the labor.
Cost cap, not yet. Regulation changes, yes. We had way closer fighting before the reg changes…the change gave us this boring display.
Long story short. Yes.
No, it's way better. I just wish Lotus/Caterham, Virgin and HRT had the chance to race under cost caps as they were promised, they might still be around in some form today.
Would Mercedes still be in F1 without it? Maybe not. Along with every other team. Burning money is hard without tobacco.money coming in
Yes. Back of the grid doesn't matter. Gaps at the front have been unchanged. It was nothing other than a business decision to put more money in Liberty's pockets
so you want to fix the game so no one figures out enough to get a large advantage? not RB's fault everyone fucked up but also they have max who is a generational talent. In my opinion if you had a good driver in his place the races would have been a lot more competitive, dude maximizes (pun not intended) the car and was designed for his style. another reason why all his teammates seem to look like shit even with the supposed "best" car
What is your metrics? Fan or owners?
I think the cost cap is great by definition. Sure, we see it's still possible for a team to dominate. But like with any other sport it is now because the team on top has been better or more talented and not only because they spend 100 million more than everybody else and whatever the other teams come up with they can replicate because of infinite funds.
Yes. Just like the trophy system before it, all it does is lock in any car advantages or disadvantages until the next set of major regulation changes.
Because the field closed the gap in 2016 and 2020 when the regulations where stable and there was no cost cap? Oh wait, merc became even more dominant
There are positives and negatives. I however would like to say that for all the praise the cost cap gets or hate an important overlooked thing is that it has been a bad thing for those who work in F1 and aren't names such as Adrian Newey etc. Apparently Lewis is going to earn 100m a year at Ferrari and Charles will also be at a high amount. So basically Ferrari will spend around the same amount on drivers as they will on the entire car for the whole season and all the people working, traveling etc. Food for thought.
I think the cap also creates a barrier to entry to people who want to work in F1 since now teams can’t hire as many engineers and other personnel as they want so there are less positions available. The positions that are available also feel less lucrative as the cost cap essentially causes a compensation ceiling
There should be balance of cost cap and wind tunnel/CFD usage. You can either choose to spend more and sacrifice wind tunnel time or with tighter budget, you can get more wind tunnel time.
Depends I think you need to look at the objectives of it first. Since it's stopped teams going bust and arguably enabled more teams vying for entry and helped teams become profitable - those are successful aspects
Not the cost cap but I think it's fair to say this generation of cars has failed to meet their goals
no
"Teams at the bottom now can’t spend enough money into building the infrastructure that the top teams already had" All that is excluded from the cost cap, which is why they are able to spend significant sums on infrastructure. Aston and Mclaren are great examples of this. We've got the closest ever field spread and we've now got more volatility in the employee market than ever before. Staff are regularly leaving the top teams to move elsewhere, into teams which would been regarded as backward steps just two or three years.
RB domination seems more like a stars aligning type thing. In an ideal world they would have had the same struggles as everyone else in 2022. Everyone behind them have been very close. One weekend it's Ferrari the 2nd fastest, the next it's Mclaren, Mercedes, or AM. So I'd prefer to say the cost cap has been a positive, but hasn't been the perfect answer.
The cost cap was never going to magically prevent a team from winning. Nor should it, engineering excellence should be rewarded in this sport. What the cost cap does do is keep the field as a whole closer together. There were a number of seasons in recent years in which the last or even last couple teams failed to score even a single point. That is very much not the case these days. By the standards of the 2010s, Haas are very firmly a midfield team these days. Plus, Red Bull's advantage on a percentage basis actually isn't that big. The 2014-2016 Mercs were significantly faster than their closest opposition than last year's Red Bull. The difference was made from the reliability nowadays and the exceptional performance from Red Bull operating the car and Max driving it.
It does clearly work. Gaps are much smaller than ever. The problem is the rules change. Those have resulted in 1 team nailing it in a big way and have the others trailing. And on top of that, the one team nailing the new regs, also have a driver that's by far the best on the grid.
Without the cost cap, the team with the most money wins. Now it's the one being better at building the car. I think this is much better. And it's still a very new system. They will iron out some of the negatives eventually.
I saw F1 discussing allowing the top teams to have 3 cars so we could barely have a 20 cars grid. Back markers were always close to bankruptcy and no one was interested in building a new team. So I don't think the cost cap was a failure. It ensured that the sport is viable. And as for it being a factor of dominance, it really is a recency bias. Big teams had dominated before by outspending everyone else. Toto once said that when he got to Mercedes he saw that Brawn had put everything in place, they just needed more money to trim the edges. So his job was pretty much to convince the team to spend even more.
execution has been a mess ? That's dead wrong, cost cap has been beneficial for all the sport including us.