Andrea Stella has question marks on Cost Cap situation with additional power unit used by F1 teams, after Red Bull opted to fit one for Max Verstappen in Brazil.
McLaren team boss Stella has posed a question for the governing body after Red Bull fitted a brand new engine on Verstappen’s car in F1 Brazil GP, which was outside the pool and an additional one to be used from the allotted number that is allowed to be used during the course of the weekend.
There is a given penalty for extra power units, but in this case Verstappen was already to start from the pitlane which minimised the penalty and gave the Dutchman extra boost due to the newness against his rivals, who have mileage on their side on their sets of power units.
Stella is not certain about the performance advantage, while noting that there is not much degradation these days. But he is not sure where the cost goes of using an additional one under the Cost Cap regulations, especially if used under performance criteria rather than being forced due to issues.
“In terms of performance, I think introducing a new engine nowadays, I mean I don’t know how this works for Honda, but in general these engines they don’t exhibit much degradation with mileage,” said Stella to media. “So that’s why in general you wouldn’t change an engine and accept a penalty or a loss of positions because normally the performance you get back doesn’t really compensate for the positional losses.
“Like I say, I’m not sure how the power degradation works for Honda. To be honest, this kind of power unit changes, they also challenge the regulations because I will be interested in understanding if the cost of this engine now goes in the cost cap or not. If the engine was changed for performance reasons, it should go in the cost cap, so let’s see if this is the case or not.
“I mean, not that I will be able to see, it’s all on the Red Bull side, but this is also one reason why we wouldn’t do it because it would end up in the cost cap. Yeah, I think that’s it, not much more to add on this matter,” summed up Stella, as Red Bull team boss Laurent Mekies noted that they had no plans to change the power unit as they had enough in their pool.
But with the opportunity presented to change everything on the car, they took it to also change the power unit. “I don’t know, it’s difficult to say,” said Mekies, when asked how much they gained due to the changed power unit. “It’s always good to fit a new engine.
“It’s fair to say that in the last part of the season, we were on schedule to finish the year without needing the change. Because we just felt that we would take the opportunity, mainly because we wanted to change the car again. So it’s difficult to give you a number. But the gaps are small enough for everything to be important,” summed up Mekies.
Here’s Lando Norris on Brazil GP win
Here’s Oscar Piastri on Brazil GP scene
