The existing F1 budget capping has already raised a lot of eyebrows in the F1 fraternity. Given the recent collisions incident at Imola, the teams are finding it hard to bring on the required upgrades on top of the existing cost cap. For instance, the Mercedes F1 car faced some severe damage due to an overtake attempt by Williams’s George Russell at Imola.
Hence, the team has to write off the car from their account books to keep up with the existing budget cap. Speaking around the whole argument, former F1 champion Ralf Schumacher also put through his expert views.
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As per Ralf: “A total write-off hurts twice! First, the accident itself and then the necessary new car naturally falls under the budget cap – a maximum of 145 million US dollars for the development and use of the racing cars per season.
“And we’re not talking about 100,000 euros for the new car. The rule applies to both the Mercedes and the Williams.”
Mercedes Boss Totto Wolff also echoed Ralf’s words in his recent statement. As indicated by him, the write off is going to cost some good money to both teams.
“Our car is a write-off,” said Wolff. “In a cost cap environment that is certainly not what we needed and is probably going to limit upgrades for what we are able to do.”
On being asked whether this could severely impact Mercedes’ 2022 plans, Wolff said: “Absolutely. We are very stretched on the cost cap and what we always feared is a total write-off of a car. This one is not going to be a total write-off but almost and it is not something we really wanted.”
Mercedes may get a dent in their development plans for 2021 due to the same write-off. Besides, their switch to 2022 also faces a fresh threat given the expense incurred by the crash in the first year of F1’s new cost cap.
