Red Bull Racing’s Christian Horner feels F1 missed the trick to implement the forthcoming changes in systematic manner between 2021 and 2022.
The date provided for the release of the 2021 F1 regulations is fast approaching, as the FIA promised the revised rules to be complete by the US GP i.e October 31. However, even in the final stages of their creation and after years of discussions, it is still not completed.
The technical regulations, especially, has been deemed ‘underdeveloped’ by Red Bull’s Horner, who also thought that they should be implemented incrementally, forcing teams to prepare for the new rules using the $175 million budget that’s being allotted.
He feels that even with the budget cap to come in 2021, the bigger teams will have a head start which everyone agreed to. By limiting 2021 to budget cap and the technical changes to 2022, it would have given them more time to get it further fine-tuned.
“I think we’ve missed a bit of an opportunity, in fact I raised it at the meeting last week, where, if you look at it, we have the budget cap, which in principle I think is pretty much agreed,” stated Horner to the media in Mexico. It’s painful for the bigger teams and obviously will prevent the bigger teams from spending beyond that 175 million cap.
“I think with hindsight we would have been better bringing the cap in first for ’21 and then taking more time to develop these regulations and evolve them and bring them in in time for ’22, so that any development that the big teams undertake would be under the umbrella of the cap. I think it’s impossible to bring that cap forward to 2020 because you will never achieve agreement on it.
“So therefore, my feeling is that a budget cap is ultimately a sensible thing for F1, but the interim period of 2020 with the current regulations we have as teams gear up for 2021 with unrestricted spend makes it a very expensive year and I think it will create a broader gap between the teams going into 2021 as those teams with more resource will simply spend more time in the research and development phase before the cars hit the track at the beginning of ’21.
“So, as I said, I think an opportunity has perhaps been lost to have that process more controlled under the cap and delay these regulations and evolve them, because there is some great stuff going on, but the car and the concept looks very underdeveloped at the moment and I think if another 12 months was taken to develop that concept and bring in something that works and perhaps addresses some of the other issues like weight and so on, I think would have been perhaps a more beneficial approach.”
The seasoned team principle also mentioned that the regulations published within the next several days will inevitably go through changes before it is eventually implemented in F1 2021, as debates rage on behind the closed doors.
“There are three elements that are going to be passed through at the end of the month. The sporting side is arguably the easiest. I think the technical regulations, they are immature and there are still a large amount of questions being raised. So, what does get published there will be inevitable TDs and refinements before we get to the 2021 season.
“Likewise with the financial regulations, there has never been a policed budget cap in F1 previously and obviously having all the tools and the infrastructure to police all the different corporate entities that exist and subsidiaries etc within F1 is no small undertaking. It’s a very complex business and everybody’s structure is different.
“So there is a lot of ground to cover and even though I think regulations will come out on the 31st, I think there will still be financial directives, technical directives that see adjustments happen before we actually get to the 2021 year,” summed up, Horner. His idea, though, of separate publishing will not see light as other team officials said.
There was still support though from his peers. Mercedes’ Toto Wolff agreed that the current technical regulations doesn’t seem 100 percent and will need refinements. Talking about the budget war, he felt it is more about efficiency than a spending war which helps teams.
“The truth is that we are all within the same financial reality and none of us has unlimited resource, unlimited financial resource behind us to just pour money into the system,” started Wolff. “It’s still about efficiency. I can tell you, and you know very well, that in the auto industry things are not looking easy.
“Nevertheless, having said that, it is clear that the big teams are the ones that are very restricted from 2021 onwards. We need to look at our structures, change process and maybe also the organisation in a way to adapt to these new challenges, which will hit us hard in 2021, because we will be doing things differently to the way we are doing them today.
“This is why it’s a clear in 2020 that we have to adapt and change and all this change is costly and will be happening in 2020, so 2020 will be a year of more financial expenditure in order to get ready for 2021. I think in F1 we are very ‘actionistic’. Things need to be done immediately and everything is so bad and we can’t continue without deploying a more strategic long-term vision.
“There are arguments that said ‘well, why don’t we put the cost cap forward, why don’t we implement it one year earlier and then start with the technical and sporting regulations in 2021’, but as Christian said, I think they are not very mature, the regulations will need some more input around the cost cap.
“The single most important factor is the auditing and policing process and none of that is in place for 2020 and obviously if you can’t police it in the right way it makes no sense to implement the rule. In general it’s a situation that we need to see a ramp-up in resource, in the way things are being policed, on the financial side and on the technical side.
“This is something that we need to address and therefore I think that the idea of pushing it one year out looks logical and strategically well thought through, but it didn’t gain the traction and didn’t trigger enough appetite with the ones that decide.”
McLaren’s Andreas Seidl agreed with Wolff to a certain extent that the bigger teams will simply do a better job because they are in a better shape. “The big teams or the top teams still really have a head start clearly for the ’21 regulations,” he said. “I would say not just because of budget but because they are simply in better shape and are doing a better job.
“For the ’21 regulations the aerodynamics will still be a key performance differentiator. There are limitations also in place for next year, in terms of CFD and wind tunnel hours that you can do, so in the end everyone has to decide how much hours you want to spend on the ’20 car and the ’21 car, so that’s how we see it.
“On our side, on the budget side, we have a given budget so this will not be affected by the ’21 regs coming in, in ’20.” Racing Point’s Otmar Szafnauer also agreed with Horner regarding the budget cap implementation but doesn’t think it will happen.
In any case, pushing the rules back a year would have major implications within the sport, and be nearly impossible to pull off. However, the F1 technical regulations must be fine-tuned, leaving the FIA in a sticky situation as the timer to Austin ticks down.
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This article was co-written by Duncan Leahy