Ongoing budget cap, the reduction and possible effects.

[chrisc90]

Hopefully we can use this thread to avoid clogging up the race thread and can discuss how the reduction of the cap in years to come may/may not effect some teams and the ability to close the gap to the front running teams.

[SiLo]

I think the budget cap WILL be a success. But the vast differences in infrastructure between teams has effectively locked in advantages for years, similar to engine freezes in the past.

Now, the teams can upgrade their facilities, so they aren't blocked from doing so, the problem is that the timeframe within which this can be achieved is long, and the on track results will also be far off. It was always going to be rubbish at the start of these new regs, limited spending and an entirely new aero platform were highly likely to see domination from the team that got it right initially, and any well run team will know how to snowball that into future years too.

Once the facilities have levelled somewhat, I expect much closer field spread and less chance of Mercedes/Red Bull/Ferrari domination like we had in years gone by. It is certainly a change for the future, and I hope they find a nice medium where the budgets allow teams to still be the pinnacle of motorsport engineering, whilst not having it be prohibitively expensive. The real kicker will be in Andretti actually get entered and make it to the grid, because they will be directly benefitting from the reduced running costs.

[DChemTech]

I think it already is a succes. We see good competition with McLaren, Aston and even on occasion Williams being in the mix with teams like Ferrari and Mercedes, now that the large teams can't just buy their way out of things. Of course, Red Bull is a bit of an outlier (although even for them, one of the cars is in the mix with the rest in quali and half of the races) - but it's not like we have 3 teams miles ahead like it was in the past, and we also have the law of diminishing returns that can no longer be beaten by drawing ones wallet.

[lio007]

What do you think about that?
https://joesaward.wordpress.com/2023/09 ... n-islands/

There was much talk about cost caps, with the spin doctors of some of the big teams trying to keep the story in the news. Still, it might not be a great idea as I did hear of a ruse that one team has which allows them to get tax breaks from their government for five years of reduced taxation for super skilled foreign workers, which means that the team can offer (and declare) a lower salary than its rivals but the employee gets more money because there is no tax to pay… Sneaky, huh? Anyway, the FIA declared that everyone was fine and so the story is dead, although I am sure some will have a whinge about things in Singapore.

I saw comments this would not be possible for the UK-based teams, but I don't know if this is really the case.

[Farnborough]

I think the budget cap WILL be a success. But the vast differences in infrastructure between teams has effectively locked in advantages for years, similar to engine freezes in the past.

Now, the teams can upgrade their facilities, so they aren't blocked from doing so, the problem is that the timeframe within which this can be achieved is long, and the on track results will also be far off. It was always going to be rubbish at the start of these new regs, limited spending and an entirely new aero platform were highly likely to see domination from the team that got it right initially, and any well run team will know how to snowball that into future years too.

Once the facilities have levelled somewhat, I expect much closer field spread and less chance of Mercedes/Red Bull/Ferrari domination like we had in years gone by. It is certainly a change for the future, and I hope they find a nice medium where the budgets allow teams to still be the pinnacle of motorsport engineering, whilst not having it be prohibitively expensive. The real kicker will be in Andretti actually get entered and make it to the grid, because they will be directly benefitting from the reduced running costs.

Something I find intriguing with this particular element are a team such as AR Sauber facilities, having seen a very good talk by Willem Toet in that facility, mostly it makes me wonder what are they actually doing with such an amazing scope at their disposal ? Just never getting near competitiveness on a continuous basis.

It really is the pure ideas going into the technical side of car design that hold sway over most other practical limits I feel.

[dialtone]

What do you think about that?
https://joesaward.wordpress.com/2023/09 ... n-islands/

There was much talk about cost caps, with the spin doctors of some of the big teams trying to keep the story in the news. Still, it might not be a great idea as I did hear of a ruse that one team has which allows them to get tax breaks from their government for five years of reduced taxation for super skilled foreign workers, which means that the team can offer (and declare) a lower salary than its rivals but the employee gets more money because there is no tax to pay… Sneaky, huh? Anyway, the FIA declared that everyone was fine and so the story is dead, although I am sure some will have a whinge about things in Singapore.

I saw comments this would not be possible for the UK-based teams, but I don't know if this is really the case.

Never seen a worse piece of ‘journalism’ in my entire life.

Dropping in little nuggets of nonsense across the article, generally against Ferrari. From questioning how Ferrari was fast in Monza, clear implication that they were cheating, to the whole nonsense about tax credits for personnel, when the whole RedBull ordeal from last year was entirely about recognition of tax credits from the government for millions of pounds.

This guy is a redditor not a journalist.

Tax credits from governments is in the rules, I dislike it and openly disliked it here, it makes no sense as do other things in the financial rules, like fines don’t lower your cap. This piece of ‘journalism’ did absolutely nothing to educate the reader or offer any sort of useful criticism and only spread FUD. Disgusting.

[dialtone]

Moving this thread here.

It certainly isn't in the interest of the sport to have dominant periods.

Agreed. There's no good evidence the budget cap leads to more dominance than we had before. The same team won the WCC 8 years in a row with free spending, most of those weren't even the least bit close. Before that we had 4 years with another team winning everything. The only changes we got with free spending was when there was a regulation change. 2014, 2017, (2021), that's it. In other words, the evidence that the free spend model yielded more convergence under stable regulations is non-existent. The cost cap is still in its infancy, we have way less data on how successful it will be in the long run.

The fact that the same team wins WCC 8 years in a row, while important, is particularly interesting in how you omit that from 2014 to 2016 engine development was practically frozen, 2017 was the first season where it got scrapped and low and behold Ferrari was able to make the following 2 seasons at least interesting, but still huge engine advantage.

Read my other posts anyway, I have said nothing about going back to free spending so that's a moot point with me, I'm perfectly ok with spend cap but there's a good way to do it, and whatever it is they are doing now. There is massive evidence that capping development arbitrarily hinders convergence, especially around rule changes. Once again, repetita juvant, free spending isn't what I'm advocating for, but there's many ways (and I've shared what some of those could be) to improve what we have now.

First year of budget cap and there's one team that is the most dominant ever, or at least in over 50 years. I'm not so sure it's a random occurrence, again the same happened with engine tokens and when scrapped everyone caught up to Merc within a few years.

The first year of the budget cap was 2021. The second year of the cap was 2022, which started out as a very close season before one team faultered. The third year of the cap is not close (in terms of the best team). So we see a picture where the team that does the best job wins, and the teams that make mistakes fall off. We also see teams that would never have fought with the "big 3" suddenly start competing with some of those teams. Now if a team wants to unseat RB they are going to have to do a better job than RB, which sounds an awful lot like sport.

2021 was frozen development due to covid, 2022 was the first year and a team didn't "faulter" but they dramatically changed the rules and then had no budget to possibly fix the car given the rule change, WTF are you supposed to do? Imagine FIA comes out and says that complex floors like the RB19 ones are illegal, they should all look like the Williams FW45 and they do this mid-season. Did RedBull faulter? Or would the whole change be stupid AF since you'd have no way to recover the change because there's no budget (not that it would be easy with budget anyway) but everything gets massively harder the cost of making a bad update grows exponentially because not only it sets you back some time, but now it runs your budget too.

Never made any fairness argument, this is a business AND a sport.

That's right, and fairness is a cornerstone of sport. There's nothing sporting about a wallet size competition. And there is no good business in it either, which is why the teams don't want to go back to that model. Having a more equal spend opens up the competition beyond a select few teams, which is a much more attractive proposition for F1 in the long run.

You must be joking. Literally every single sport is about wallet size competition. From researching more hydro efficient swimsuits to buying the best pair of skis or sail/carbon hull for your boat, or best wetsuit/shoes/bike for your triathlon or even having the best coaches. Like it or not wallet size has always been part of sports and why some people are successful and others less so.

Limiting the cost is helpful and I like it, no question from me on it, but implementing it wrong is going to hurt competition, not help it because the starting point isn't everything is equal and we cap from there. Starting point is likely one team built a winning design and they'll win everything for 8 years if we cap everything there.

It's not that hard to understand... If you cap my spend I will be forced to spend more time before I catch up to you. In an uncapped environment I could redesign the entire car and copy in-season, in a cap I can't. Meanwhile the leading car will develop a bit slower but still develops plenty.

I think we've seen plenty of re-designs mid season. AMR 2022 comes to mind, Merc have changed their philosophy a lot. Beyond that I see no evidence that the free spend environment created a closer competition. Merc were dominant in 2014, by 2016 they won every race but two. The competition wasn't getting closer, the only thing that happened was a rule change came in for 2017 which reset the competitive order. What happened after that? The championship got successively less competitive every year from 2017 until 2020, then the cost cap came in. In other words, with a free spend the team that was winning kept outspending its rivals and kept its advantage, even made it bigger most years.

Merc haven't changed a thing, they still have the same draggy design with the same floor design. Toto commented plenty how much they have to scrap stuff together because there's no budget to make real changes.

AMR was the worst car, hired one of the key guys from RBR and copied most of RBR after scrapping the previous season after 2 races. Not a great success case that in order to barely catch up you have to sacrifice a whole year.

As I already said... In 2017 the engine token system that was blocking engine development was scrapped and all teams, particularly Ferrari, became able to actually rebuild their engine from scratch, that's why 2017 season was competitive unlike 2014-2016. Merc still retained significant advantage engine wise (which allowed them plenty of times to run more DF but similar top speed) but it was much closer. The reason why competition wasn't getting closer is because there was no way they could, engine development was frozen, nothing you can do with aero when the other team has 50+ bhp on everyone else, doesn't even need to use 8th gear.

I have zero interest in your judgement of competence or incompetence of other teams. These arguments are useless at best, and every team said the same when it was their turn to dominate. Furthermore, once again, the engine token nonsense shows it's totally false, there is a way to allow competition that levels off and eventually caps development of the engine. Capping development from day 1 of new rules doesn't work.

I could care less what your interests are, your interests are not arguments. We have an equal spend environment and one team is flourishing over its competitors. They are obviously doing something better than the competition. They're more efficient, their innovation is clearly working, their correlation is working, they're doing a better job in a much more fair sporting environment. You not wanting to hear it doesn't make it not true. It's all sour grapes.

This is actually pretty funny. For starters it's "I COULDN'T care less", if you "COULD care less" it means you actually care hence why you could care less.
I didn't share my interests with you, you seem to be chopping off my comment and then commenting piecemeal but somehow also in a disconnected way, as if you just wanted to get back at me here, but at least use the right words.

That I'm all sour grapes is a weird ad personam when you also agree that it's not in the interest of the sport to have dominant periods. I'm first to recognize that RBR did a great job and they are the most dominant team ever. I'm not a Ferrari investor, I like to watch races, the races this year suck because no matter where one team starts, they win. If you like it, enjoy this sport going back to the level of popularity of years before DTS, it's already almost only available on pay tv, people must be thrilled to have to pay to watch this type of show where each race everyone already knows what's going to happen.

[organic]

Merc did have the budget to change their direction immediately but they gambled on figuring out how to run the W13. They got some signs of promise in 2nd half of 2022 and pressed on with this gamble.

They have developed this halfway car at the beginning of 2023 after launching a 2nd zeropod car. They could've had this halfway car a year ago and ready for 2023 with a more conventional chassis.

I don't buy this whole lack of budget to correct mistakes when we can see McLaren do exactly that this year as well from being the 9th quickest car. Previous technical team made incorrect decisions -> reshuffle -> new direction -> instant results and leap to ~3rd quickest car.

AMR also got the beginning of 2022 rules fundamentally wrong. They were the worst car but outscored alpine in the latter portion of the season and began 2023 with the 2nd fastest car. And they did this with their aged facilities and a lot of new personnel

There's a lot of evidence for turnarounds being possible within the budget cap and large changes in competitive order.. the main evidence that it isn't is Merc and they've already admitted to making many incorrect decisions!

[dialtone]

Merc did have the budget to change their direction immediately but they gambled on figuring out how to run the W13. They got some signs of promise in 2nd half of 2022 and pressed on with this gamble.

They have developed this halfway car at the beginning of 2023 after launching a 2nd zeropod car. They could've had this halfway car a year ago and ready for 2023 with a more conventional chassis.

I don't buy this whole lack of budget to correct mistakes when we can see McLaren do exactly that this year as well from being the 9th quickest car. Previous technical team made incorrect decisions -> reshuffle -> new direction -> instant results and leap to ~3rd quickest car.

You are heavily discounting that starting from scratch isn’t free. You really need to rebuild everything. Any company worth its salt, faced with budget issues, is going to first attempt at fixing what they have because it’s cheaper. If you could run 2 projects in parallel (one to fix and one to redesign) they would do that, but given you need to choose…

[Cs98]

removed bcs formatting

[Cs98]

Ferrari closed heavily on the engine side from 2014-2016 but didn't become much more competitive overall. It was the aero changes which helped them for 2017. And if it's the token system that did it, why did Ferrari get successively worse from 2017-2020. They got gapped year by year aerodynamically.

All in all there was no evidence that teams were converging aerodynamically with big spending. Quite the opposite, the teams that spent the most simply won out and extended their advantage.

2021 was definitely a cost cap year, and frozen development on certain parts.

You must be joking. Literally every single sport is about wallet size competition.

No, I'm not joking. The fact you're not familiar with capped spending in other sports is the only joke here. Owning a franchise might be a wallet size competition, but running it well doesn't have to be.

not help it because the starting point isn't everything is equal and we cap from there

So you want spending BoP... Why stop there, why not engine and downforce BoP? All in the interest of sport and business, right? I guess we just have a completely different set of values. I value the engineering competition and it being fair, and you value the end product being artificially close.

Merc haven't changed a thing, they still have the same draggy design with the same floor design.

Patently false. They're way less draggy now. Doesn't mean the car is good, but the reason it's bad is different. Last year they were too aggressive with the floor, this year they were too careful with it. At least according to Merc themselves. Two seasons, two fundamental mistakes, two years of not winning. They just need to do a better job.

Of course it reeks of sour grapes. Your team isn't succeeding and another team is dominant so we need to get rid of fair spending to implement some kind of BoP? You not being a Ferrari investor doesn't exactly make you an unbiased observer though does it? I don't think there are many F1 team shareholders on this forum

Engine power is similar, budget is the same, facilities are comparable. Stop with the excuses and step up and do a better job than the competition. Crying that another team did a better job and that you need more money than them to come back is just an admission you are not as good as them. The best should be winning, that's sport.

[dialtone]

Total disagreement but I’ll just point out that Ferrari ran 059/3-4-5 in 2014-2016 and 062/0 in 2017.

The 2017 engine had an estimate of 770bhp vs 600-680bhp for 059.

Anyone saying Ferrari didn’t gain thanks to the engine maybe doesn’t have sour grapes, but it sure has very little idea of what they are talking about.

[AR3-GP]

I think the budget cap WILL be a success. But the vast differences in infrastructure between teams has effectively locked in advantages for years, similar to engine freezes in the past.

Now, the teams can upgrade their facilities, so they aren't blocked from doing so, the problem is that the timeframe within which this can be achieved is long, and the on track results will also be far off. It was always going to be rubbish at the start of these new regs, limited spending and an entirely new aero platform were highly likely to see domination from the team that got it right initially, and any well run team will know how to snowball that into future years too.

Once the facilities have levelled somewhat, I expect much closer field spread and less chance of Mercedes/Red Bull/Ferrari domination like we had in years gone by. It is certainly a change for the future, and I hope they find a nice medium where the budgets allow teams to still be the pinnacle of motorsport engineering, whilst not having it be prohibitively expensive. The real kicker will be in Andretti actually get entered and make it to the grid, because they will be directly benefitting from the reduced running costs.

Something I find intriguing with this particular element are a team such as AR Sauber facilities, having seen a very good talk by Willem Toet in that facility, mostly it makes me wonder what are they actually doing with such an amazing scope at their disposal ? Just never getting near competitiveness on a continuous basis.

Put crap in, get crap out as they say,

[Juzh]

The fact that the same team wins WCC 8 years in a row, while important, is particularly interesting in how you omit that from 2014 to 2016 engine development was practically frozen, 2017 was the first season where it got scrapped and low and behold Ferrari was able to make the following 2 seasons at least interesting, but still huge engine advantage.

There were restrictions on development but it wasn't frozen. In 2014 we had an in-season freeze, but development went on for 2015 in almost unrestricted fashion. Yes, there were silly tokens, but those still allowed for a wide scope of components to be redesigned, that's how ferrari managed to come up with a much more competitive engine in 2015.
In 2015 mid season developments returned, even if governed by some restrictions. Then we had 2016 where mercedes once again managed to pull away on the PU front and renault even managed to almost catch up to ferrari who fell asleep that year. All this is happening this supposed "engine freeze" period.
In 2017 with unlimited development ferrari did have a more competitive PU, but in terms of overall balance not much has changed and mercedes still had the best PU. It took until 2018 ferrari managed to come up with a fully competitive PU (even if there were rumblings already about some trick being used).

So freeze or no freeze, it didn't matter in the grand scheme of things, mercedes engine was the best from 2014-2021 (not gonna count 2019). I think from 2022 onwards F1 managed to hit a small miracle in terms of engine performance equalisation because we actually got one. Fer, merc and honda are near indistinguishable and only renault is still lagging behind. They should be given some leeway to develop, rest of them are fine. PU freeze in current stage it a big win for F1, even ferrari and merc are happy with it as they no longer need to sink hundreds of millions into the program each year. We know this because they never ever mention the freeze in a bad way since 2022.

[dialtone]

The level of revisionism on this topic is through the roof.

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/analy ... 0/4994430/

There are specific declarations, in the article above from Abiteboul, about how the token system was scrapped to allow for engine convergence.

The token system was practically freezing engines, minimal changes happened from 2014 to 2016, Ferrari had crap chassis and crap aero in 2014, only did well in 2015 in high DF tracks like singapore and hungary or took advantage of errors/issues at Merc like Rosberg engine issues in Monza, but Ham won by 25 seconds.

You just like to argue.