F1 is a sport that used to be one-sided. The big guy with big money takes home the trophy. But the governing body decided it was time to balance the grid by introducing a slew of changes. Mercedes, who used to splurge a lot of money, is facing the wrath of the FIA’s cost cap as they feel the pressure of working with less. Toto Wolff recently addressed the media stating the pressure of working under restrictions. What did he confess? Let’s find out.

FIA, in its attempt to level the playing field for middle and bottom teams, introduced a slew of changes in the last few years. Among those were the proportionate distribution of the wind tunnel time and the ground effect regulations. However, it’s the budget cap that, according to Wolff, is turning out to be a bigger challenge.

Toto Wolff reveals how the cost cap is hampering the Mercedes car’s development

Pre-cost-cap era, Mercedes was among the biggest spenders, who, as per an ESPN report, spent as high as $442 million during the 2019 season. Toto confessed that he never knew the cost of something like a front suspension (which can, according to chaseyoursport.com, cost anywhere between $500k to $1 million) before the budget regulations came into existence.

“I think the cost gap gives it so many constraints,” Toto Wolff told media, including GPblog. “Because if we were completely free we would bring a different chassis. So we have to really decide carefully what we want to upgrade, so bringing new front suspension to Imola, and then the aero upgrade that comes with it, and floor. But if we were free, we’d probably bring double the amount of upgrades, but so would the others. Like in the past, we wouldn’t even know what a front suspension costs.”

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Sky F1 Pundit Disses Toto Wolff by Citing Nico Rosberg’s “Snoozefest” After Recent Request to the FIA

The Austrian cribbed, “And today we need to take the purchase price of the aluminium, then factor in how much is actually the cost of the car, how much is actually the machining of it cost, how much do you need to write off from the aluminium that you don’t need, price out every bolt that goes into the suspension, the carbon that you bought out of the raw material, then cut it, put it on, what’s the energy cost of the composite room, the overhead that goes into this, and at the end comes out the product.”

Now, he admits that the team knows exactly the cost of something as simple as a bolt that goes into the suspension.

Wolff believes the budget cap is killing creativity

After last year’s Red Bull’s cost cap saga and the sanctions that followed, teams are taking the regulations very seriously. Just like other teams, Mercedes has hired cost analysts who keep a close eye on the price of everything that goes into the car. They also keep a look at other expenditures that fall under the regulations. However, they do it with the help of engineers who could be spending their precious time on the car’s development alone.

“It means that it’s gone so far that we have cost analysts, engineers, that need to decide whether buying that kilogram of raw material of aluminium is worth the performance gain on the other side. And that makes it so complex, and that process is so difficult and painful. People that should be creative only and have basically carte blanche, they can’t do it because somebody is telling them whether it’s feasible in the cost gap or not,” Wolff concluded.

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Do you think the teams and the FIA will reach a middle ground on the budget cap issue to make sure that the engineers’ creativity stays alive?