The hare and tortoise dilemma at the heart of F1’s 2022 team battle

The intriguing differences in the set-up choices of Red Bull and Ferrari so far this season have been critical in deciding the outcome of the two Formula 1 races we’ve had. Ferrari’s higher downforce approach, sacrificing top speed in favour of looking after tyres, helped Charles Leclerc manage things to perfection in Bahrain.

However, Red Bull’s aggressive choices in cutting back its wing levels and gunning for top speed, paid dividends in Saudi Arabia when it was key to letting Max Verstappen power his way past the lead Ferrari and grab the win.

The different ways the top cars produce lap time has been interesting to analyse, with the early indications suggesting that there is absolutely nothing to choose between the two lead cars when it comes to their overall performance. They achieve the same lap times in slightly different ways.

What will be interesting to see moving forwards is whether or not one of them nudges more towards the approach of its rival. Ferrari certainly gave the impression after last weekend that it could have perhaps chased top speed more, because the tyre degradation benefits it hoped to have did not materialise on the robust hard.

But as teams return to their factories this week following the intense run of pre-season testing and the opening double header, work on finding the optimum downforce/drag levels is not going to be the biggest headache.

Instead, it is the longer term plans that are a major cause of concern right now.

It has been clear for months that the opening races of the season were only ever going to be a starting point. With the development potential of the 2022 car so massive at this early stage of the new rules cycle, what matters was always going to be about who can bring the best upgrades to their cars.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB18, Charles Leclerc, Ferrari F1-75

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

In years gone by, teams would be flat out in their windtunnels and factories, preparing and manufacturing as many updates as they can get through the system to keep adding performance.

As soon as the designers felt that a tweak to the floor, or wings, or sidepods, would bring a few more points of downforce, the new parts would be manufactured and readied for some Friday testing at a grand prix, and then could potentially be racing that very same weekend.

But that approach does not exist for the top teams this year because their hands are tied by the cost cap.

The budget cap limits don’t stop the ideas for improvement being made in the factories, because staff are still paid for their year’s work. However, what they do is restrict how many of these improvements are given the green light and are pushed through the windtunnel and then into manufacture

If they throw all their efforts into a raft of dramatic updates at the start of the season, as they may have done in the past, then they could find themselves pretty quickly smashing in to the $142.4m spending limit (for 23 races).

They would then have nothing left in their coffers when the championship gets down to the pointy end later on.

Just as Aesop’s hare bounded off into an early lead before messing things up, F1 teams are having to weigh up whether they should attack now and risk potential trouble later in the year.

Or, is it better to be the tortoise? That means slow and steady work to maximise the bang for buck of every planned upgrade and spread it out over the entire campaign for a potentially better finish.

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari F1-75, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB18, Sergio Perez, Red Bull Racing RB18, Carlos Sainz Jr., Ferrari F1-75, George Russell, Mercedes W13, Kevin Magnussen, Haas VF-22

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

As Ferrari F1 team principal Mattia Binotto said after the Saudi Grand Prix when I asked him about the programme for updates to an F1-75 which has been largely unchanged since the first test: “I think it's not only a matter of when we'll be ready, but the matter of budget caps to try to make sure that we're not spending all what we got in the first races.”

The budget cap limits don’t stop the ideas for improvement being made in the factories, because staff are still paid for their year’s work. However, what they do is restrict how many of these improvements are given the green light and are pushed through the windtunnel and then into manufacture.

And whereas in the past teams may have elected for regular small steps to keep nudging forwards the pace of their challenger, now they will want to wait until there is a sizeable gain in laptime before they commit to spending.

The likelihood is that there will be fewer changes to the cars this year, but when they come the steps will be bigger.

As the pressures increase and teams battle the ceiling of the cost cap, the ultra competitive nature of F1 means that inevitably teams are going to try to look for ways to exploit any grey areas in the financial regulations that cover the cost cap

Teams will also have to be 100 percent convinced that the upgrades work too. There will be no second chance to spend money if a development path that a team heads down turns out to be wrong, and millions of dollars are wasted on manufacturing parts that have to be binned.

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said: “I think pretty much every team is pretty close to the limit this year. It’s very aggressive, so you have to be very strategic in how you apply your funds to developments.

“I think rather than just running as fast as you can and getting as much performance from the car, you’ve got to be much more selective in what you choose, based on its cost. So it drives efficiency.”

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB18, 1st position, drives into Parc Ferme

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

There are some tough strategic decisions to be made in understanding the long game here, and working out where and when it is best to commit to the outlay. Unexpected circumstances could play their part too. A run of hefty accidents that go beyond what teams have contingency for will almost certainly mean that money will have to be diverted from development to repairs.

There is also some angst at the moment about the dramatic increase in costs that has been triggered by the rise in commodities like oil and gas. Whereas ‘electricity, gas and water costs incurred in the course of both F1 Activities and Non-F1 Activities’ are exempt from the cost cap limit, freight charges are not – and those have increased dramatically as fuel prices have shot up in recent weeks.

Horner said after Saudi: “The freight costs are likely to double this year...we're talking multiple millions.”

As the pressures increase and teams battle the ceiling of the cost cap, the ultra competitive nature of F1 means that inevitably teams are going to try to look for ways to exploit any grey areas in the financial regulations that cover the cost cap.

It has certainly been interesting to already hear the first calls for the FIA to ensure that its policing of the cost cap is as robust as it is for the technical regulations. As F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali told Italian media at the Bahrain season opener: “If those who have to regulate miss something, the whole system collapses.”

Indeed, if the policing is not good enough and a team elects to try to find a workaround the spending limit, then that could deliver just as much performance to the car as an illegal car part.

As Binotto remarked in Saudi: “My concern is that we need to make sure that we've got the right policing on that because it can be, let me say, a game changer in the fight for developments.”

Mattia Binotto, Team Principal, Ferrari

Photo by: Ferrari

The biggest unknown is that the scope of the cost cap, and the effectiveness of the policing, is pretty much uncharted territory. There has not yet been a test case in the courts about breaches, nor any big dispute in public on areas that a team views its spending different to the FIA’s intention of the rules.

There is also no history from teams about what the scale of sanctions are for minor overspends, just in case they are tempted to push things as far as they dare for a small consequence. The regulations determine that a ‘minor’ breach could be as much as five percent of the limit – so an extra $7 million.

But would the extra performance driven from ‘accidentally’ going over the limit on performance bring more results and performance than the downside of any fine, further cost cap reduction or championship points deduction?

Plus, would F1 really change the outcome of the world championship a year after it is complete because of a minor overspend? We do not know right now. As the season wears on, the likelihood is that teams will be keeping a super close eye on the scale of the upgrades that rivals are bringing.

And if any single team is consistently bringing on the performance parts, while their rivals are hamstrung because they have hit the spending limit, then that may prove to be the trigger for alarm bells to ring. But, if the hare has already got himself across the finish line, there may be no way back for the tortoise other than to go to court.

And that is definitely not how an F1 season as potentially epic as this one deserves to end.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB18, leaves his pit box as Carlos Sainz Jr., Ferrari F1-75, comes in for his pit stop

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images