Red Bull Boss Horner Speaks Openly About Dealing With Their Handicap
In theory, under the current regulations and with the cost cap penalty, Red Bull should be at a reasonable disadvantage compared to the rest of the field as far as upgrades are concerned. This was one of the aims of the current regulations – to ensure that no one team gained a massive advantage that lasted for years as has been the case in the past. However, Red Bull are still very dominant. Case in point, they won the most receent race in Hungary by a margin of over 33 seconds. Will the supposed effects of the staggered development allowances ever become significant enough? Red Bull team principal Christian Horner thinks so
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Could The Cost Cap Penalty And Reduced Development Make Red Bull Even More Dominant?
Horner while speaking to multiple media outlets started off by confirming that they will be focusing on next year’s car
“The upgrades [in Hungary] did what they said on the tin, so from that point of view, it’s sort of box ticked”
“Now, with the handicap that we have, we have to really swing our focus over to next year”
“Because we have a significant deficit of wind tunnel time compared to our competitors”
“We have to be very selective in how we use it”
He clarified that there will be a few minor upgrades still to come this year but nothing huge
“We have a few circuit-specific things [still to come in 2023], but nothing that hasn’t been done already or committed to in research and development”
He then highlighted the effects of the cost cap penalty and staggered development allowances
“We have that [cost cap] penalty until October this year”
“So particularly in terms of the amount of runs that you can do per week, we’re significantly down compared to second and third place”
“And we are massively down once you get back to teams that are fourth or fifth”
“And if you compare McLaren’s amount of runs they can do in a wind tunnel versus ourselves, it’s a huge, huge difference”
“Of course, we have to be very, very selective in the running that we’re doing”
With Red Bull’s confirmation that they will be focusing primarily on next year’s car, there are those who feel that this will help them keep dominating next year as well as other teams are still focusing on this year’s car
This has raised questions from some about the alignment of these results with the intended goals of the new regulations, as Red Bull's cost cap penalty has not seemingly had a substantial impact on their dominance
This was something Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton had cautioned against last month while speaking to Sky F1
“By the end of the year we will probably catch Red Bull”
“But that’s only because they’re probably already focusing on next year’s car because they’re so far ahead”
“They don’t have to make any changes to this year’s car any more as they’re so far ahead”
Lewis had suggested a radical idea to combat this
“I think the FIA should probably put a time when everyone is allowed to start developing on the next year’s car”
“So August 1, that’s when everybody can start so then no one can get an advantage on the next year, cause that sucks”
Lewis was quick to acknowledge that he had been the beneficiary of such a dominant period himself but that it needed to stop
“I was really fortunate to have one of those periods, Max is having it now”
“But with the way it’s going it will continue to happen over and over again and I don’t think we need that in the sport”
The argument could be made that teams that start off really poorly have the most incentive to abandon the current season and focus on the next one
However, in reality, teams rarely tend to completely abandon development on their current cars early in the season
Hamilton’s own team Mercedes is a great example. They will be bringing upgrades this week in Spa as confirmed by team principal Toto Wolff in an official statement
“We will be bringing updates this weekend as part of our ongoing development programme”
“We hope this will be another small step forward in improving the W14”
“As we have seen at many races this year though, it is hard to predict where we will be relative to our competitors”
One school of thought suggests that the reason Red Bull’s dominance isn’t diminishing despite their restrictions is because they found the most successful direction for their car’s development and can be therefore more efficient and effecting with the time they have
Despite all this, it is still early days in terms of the budget cap era, leaving much to be discovered about how the development race will unfold over upcoming seasons. Time will be the ultimate judge, and teams must adapt and strategize to navigate this evolving landscape. As the true impact of these regulations gradually unveils, the Formula 1 arena awaits to see which approach will prevail in the quest for competitiveness.