Mercedes and Red Bull believe Formula 1 has missed an opportunity in not delaying the planned 2021 regulatory overhaul by 12 months.
Leading Formula 1 figures are in the final stages of producing the Sporting and Technical Regulations for 2021, which currently have to be published prior to October 31.
Part of the regulatory overhaul includes the gradual introduction of a budget cap – initially set at $175m – but there has been widespread expectation that big teams will spend heavily in 2020 before the change is implemented.
This has led to fears that the competitive order will not change drastically come 2021.
“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,” said Red Bull boss Christian Horner.
“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.
“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.”
Mercedes counterpart Toro Wolff concurred with Horner’s view on the situation.
“I think in Formula 1 we are very ‘actionistic’,” said Wolff. “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.”
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