Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur has highlighted the budget cap as one area where all the teams will have to exercise caution under Formula 1‘s new rules in 2026.
Coming into a campaign that will comprise a complete reset to the regulations, one of the biggest challenges for sides will be remaining within the cost cap.
The cost cap number will also be revised next season, with the upper limit rising from a base cap of $135 million to a more luxurious $215 million next year.
However, the jump is less to increase the team’s spending and more to account for inflation and additional costs that have been included in the overall cap.
Vasseur has already been open about how car development will play a significant role in the pecking order under the new regulations.
With that, he specifies that the cost cap will be a key player in the title contenders.
“I think the driver of the introduction of upgrades won’t be the capacity to develop into the wind tunnel,” Vasseur told media including Motorsport Week.
“The driver of the introduction of upgrades will be the cost cap.
“It means we will have to be clever to make good use of the budget that we have for development, and to cope with this budget to introduce upgrades.
“For sure, the sooner the better and the more important the better on this.”
The importance of upgrades
In the previous regulations, well-timed and effective upgrades have allowed teams to take leaps towards the sharp end, McLaren having been a prominent example.
Unlike the Woking-based squad, Ferrari has struggled to optimise upgrades in some recent seasons, and Vasseur made it clear that this will be the focus for 2026.
“But it’s not a given that if you start to introduce four or five upgrades in the first couple of races… if you have to send a floor to Japan or to China, you are burning half of your budget on development,” he said.
“It means we will need to be clever in the plan, perhaps to develop sometimes more in the wind tunnel and to introduce in race three or four, when we are going back to Bahrain.
“It’s a question we’ll have to deal with; we’ll have to deal with it in the future, on a day-to-day basis, seeing on one end what we are getting from the wind tunnel and what the cost of the development is.
“For sure, if you have an upgrade on the flap of the front wing, it’s less costly than the floor to China.”
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