Three big crashes have put a dent in the Mercedes cost cap budget
Mercedes Formula 1 boss Toto Wolff has confirmed that the team’s recent run of major accidents has impacted the cost cap so severely that it has stopped the flow of development updates.
Kimi Antonelli crashed in FP1 in Monza and then George Russell had offs in both Austin and Mexico, with the latter forcing the spare chassis into usage.
After the Austin crash the team had only one of its latest floors in Mexico last weekend, but the damaged one has been repaired, and will be available in Brazil.
However Wolff anticipates that no further new parts will make it to the track.
“Kimi’s crash in Monza, George’s crash in Austin, George’s crash here,” said Wolff last weekend. “I love a driver to push, and I’d rather crash and we know what the car is capable of doing than not. In cost cap land nevertheless, it’s a tricky situation.
“So these three shunts put us on the back foot. And certainly the one that happened [in FP2 In Mexico] was massive. We had to opt for a completely new chassis, and that is a tremendous hit in the cost cap.
“And we probably have to dial down on what we put on the car. So we will be having two upgrade packages in Brazil, two floors, but that’s basically it.
“There’s nothing else that’s going to come. We have certain limitation on parts where we need to be creative how we’re managing this. And certainly there is an impact on how many development parts we can put on the car, because the answer is zero.”
In Mexico Lewis Hamilton had the newer floor and Russell the older one, although no decision has been made on what will happen in Brazil.
“I’m always open-minded about what the drivers think,” said Wolff. “If I’m certain that George is going to go for the new and Lewis may want to back-to-back the old floor now in Brazil, and we will certainly talk with him what his preference is.”
Wolff also explained how Russell suffered the front wing damage that hampered him during the Mexican race.
“When overtaking Piastri out of the pits he hit a bump, and they came very close, so the amount of turbulence might have played a role,” he said.
“One of the main front flaps collapsed. So it was a tremendous loss of downforce. I think in the high-speed, it was 20 points. He then kind of drove around it very well. But obviously, the more your tyres are being hit, the impact on lap time is exponential.”
Regarding Russell’s superior pace in Mexico he added: “I think with the hard run, you saw that there was quite a bit of a difference. So two reasons. First of all, I think George drove very well all weekend.
“And on the other side, there may be something in the update package that causes something that we don’t understand, because we had two massive crashes in the same corner in Austin, but then we had a crash on the old car too.
“So these cars are so on the knife’s edge that it will be an interesting experiment in Brazil to see whether there is a high-speed instability or low-speed factor.
“So I don’t think we can just extrapolate that one is better than the other, which we know it’s not.”
Adam Cooper F1 