The time lag of ideas that offers intrigue over F1's future fight

Formula 1 car development under the cost cap regime is a world away from how things were done in the decades before.

Rewind the clock just a few years, and if teams had big enough budgets, then they would bring upgrades as quickly as they could make them. There were paddock whispers a few years ago (perhaps an urban myth, perhaps true) of a race-winning team being so aggressive with its bid to bring developments that some new front wings were only finished in a special workshop on a plane on the way to the Japanese Grand Prix...

But such rampant arrival of parts has now long gone, as teams under the cost cap have had to ration their development plans to a huge extent. Every new item that is brought to a car has to be justified by the finance department – for any cash wasted on a part that doesn’t deliver good value, means less can be spent on making gains further down the road.

That is why Toto Wolff revealed shortly before the summer break about his team having a whole new approach to the processing of parts.

"We have a tracker with financial engineers that track every single process and every single part that comes into the car," Wolff told Autosport.

"So when we take things out of the truck, the financial engineer notes, the value. When you utilise, it's being counted for. You are following this trend, like we have planned. We didn't bring a lot at the beginning but it's coming steady now."

What this has meant for a number of teams is that the mindset of introducing new parts has changed. Now, teams generally want to wait a bit to guarantee that there is a decent step forward in an upgrade before they green-light parts into production. This minimises manufacturing costs and maximises performance gains.

Mercedes has struggled with its 2022 car - but changes of design direction will have to wait for next year

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

One of the consequences of this is that the true picture of where teams are at with their cars – and the state of their improvements – may not be shown on track even though parts are ready to go back at base. If a team elects to hold fire on introducing new components because it doesn’t want the expense, then the factory can be much further down the road in its understanding of the car and what it has available as potential than rivals (and fans) will see on track at that time.

It’s a disconnect that we haven’t seen in F1 for a while, and it’s one that could well be quite intriguing in terms of the impact that it has on the 2023 grid.

As the F1 2022 season nears it end, and teams are desperately counting the pounds to ensure that they don’t bust the cost cap, the lack of progress that they appear to be making on track may not be in line with their discoveries and developments at their design office. At this stage of the year, especially if they are close to the cap limit, it makes much more sense to hold fire and roll bits into 2023 than rush them out now.

"The cost cap certainly hasn’t put a cap on people bringing up great ideas. Back at the factory, that’s always happening and that’s quite exciting" Jock Clear, Ferrari

And that could be especially more true for the top three teams. Their positions all look to be fairly static in the constructors’ championship, with Ferrari just needing to ensure it does not lose too much ground to a Mercedes team whose priority is getting back to winning ways next year.

Ferrari senior performance engineer Jock Clear says that the cost cap is weighing heavy on upgrade plans right now, even if there are some exciting developments taking place back at the factories.

“The state of play of the championship obviously has an impact on whether you push through more developments here, and obviously towards the end of the year, you’re pretty much knowing where your ceiling is on what you can spend, because your year is capped,” he said.

“Inevitably, you’re going to have to make some decisions based on the state of play at the moment. And of course, you never stop developing.

Ferrari is in a fight with Mercedes over second in the standings - which could inform its upgrade choices

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

“Whether you choose to spend it on packages that come to the circuit or not, the actual brain power doesn’t really cost a great deal.

“There’s very intelligent people at all of the teams coming up with ideas. So even if you’re not bringing them to the circuit, they are going to manifest probably beginning of next season.

“Again, you choose when you bring them. The cost cap certainly hasn’t put a cap on people bringing up great ideas. Back at the factory, that’s always happening and that’s quite exciting.”

So despite fairly static rules in to 2023, even with the forced 15mm raising of floor edges, we will not necessarily see the kind of approach that teams took in the past, where anything they could find for next year’s car was often brought forward because it could benefit them immediately.

It also means that the trends we see over the remainder of the 2022 campaign will not necessarily hold true into next season. If Red Bull pulls even further ahead of Ferrari over the season's end, that does not automatically translate in to what the true state of affairs is. It could be that the progress at their own factories have gone in a totally opposite direction.

Plus, it must not be forgotten that F1’s aero balancing rules mean that Red Bull will have less windtunnel time and CFD computing potential compared to the Ferrari and Mercedes teams that finish behind it.

All of these factors have come together to leave Red Bull mindful that despite its RB18 appearing on track to be easily the class of the current field, its level of advantage is far from guaranteed beyond the end of the season.

The RB18 is at the peak of its powers - but will reduced aero testing stop Red Bull carrying that form into 2023?

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

As Red Bull chief engineer Paul Monaghan explained: “Next year, we’ve got rule changes and we have the least aero resource now, in terms of tunnel hours and CFD. I might argue we’ve got the best people, but that’s a selfish view.

“So I’m not sure you can take an extrapolation of this year’s performance and say that it will be of benefit to us next year.

“We’ve got to move at at least the pace of our opposition, and we’ve got to absorb the regulation changes for the floor edge heights, and the stiffness change, without necessarily losing as much as our opposition, or at least losing the same amount, and then developing at the same rate.

“If you’re asking, can we do that? We can only do what we can do within our four walls. We will do the best job we can with some of the best people in the pitlane, and then we can judge really in races one, two, three next year, can’t we?”

The summer may barely be finished, but F1’s winter reset is already under way.

Whether the cost cap and aero testing rules truly shake up the field will be tested next year

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images