McLaren CEO Zak Brown says he believes that it will be another two years before Formula 1 has a deeply competitive field as a result of the budget cap.
F1 introduced a cost cap of $145 million last year in an attempt to halt great spending differentials between teams on the grid.
The cap will be reduced further to $135m for the 2023 campaign.
All teams must operate below the cap or suffer a punishment – a scenario that the Red Bull team fell into earlier this year.
Prior to the cost cap, teams such as Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull were heavily outspending other outfits on the grid and therefore had a competitive advantage.
With the cap in place to regulate the differences, Brown believes that it will be another handful of years before the true results of the cap takes shape.
“I think probably another two years, even though we’re all kind of on the same money now, some teams have bigger infrastructures,” he said.
“We’re still waiting for our wind tunnel which is down the road to be done here shortly, a new simulator.
“Even though everyone is on an equal playing field, or most teams from an annual expenditure standpoint, a handful of teams have come in with better technology infrastructure which we’re catching up on and some other teams are.”
F1 also had fresh technical regulations come into play this year, with Red Bull dominating the season en route to championship success.
Brown says that the installation of new regulations means it’s only natural that there is a larger performance difference than normal in the field.
“Whenever you have a new regulation that comes out, someone gets it right and someone gets it wrong,” he commented.
“What ends up happening is everyone sees who got it right and they gravitate towards what they’ve seen and what works from an aerodynamic point of view.
“So if you look at F1 historically, I think it was 2012, which was the end of a regulation, you had a lot of different winners that year.
“As these regulations stabilise, people will catch up. In a couple of years time, it’s going to be an awesome competition.”
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