Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff has confirmed fundamental changes coming to the teams’ 2024 Formula 1 car, despite the cost cap restrictions.
The F1 cost cap currently sits at $135-Million (£105.6-Million), which puts a strain on major developments of an F1 car over the course of a full season, and with a team like Mercedes, racing against the clock to try and get back to the front, that creates a conundrum.
But according to team boss Toto Wolff, the budget is not hindering their plans after they introduced a major upgrade package for the W14 at the 2023 Monaco Grand Prix, which saw the team deliver slivers of pace, with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell finishing on the podium (second and third) in Spain while the former was second Canada.
Despite Mercedes adopting a new design philosophy with the B-Spec W14 – it has sidepods now – the chassis which was homologated at the start of the season means the car is still compromised, which means a permanent solution will have to wait till 2024.
Mercedes’ spending under control
Wolff also confirmed the team are bringing a big upgrade package to Silverstone, which posed the question on how Mercedes can make sure they can start work on next year’s car as they continue to understand and develop the current one, under the cost cap.
“We have set up a huge organisation in our financial department of 46 people, that monitors the cost cap down to the last screw,” Wolff told Sky Sports F1 in Montreal. “We look at that trend of our spend during all of the year and what we’ve done is basically allocate resource to various projects.
“We’ve stayed below that line all year last year, and we’re still below that line this year and that is considering a normal development switch for next year. This is still pretty much on track,” he added.
“The good thing is that we are constantly learning about what the car is doing. There are going to be some fundamental design changes for next year, but it’s not that we’re building stuff.
“It’s more like what are we simulating? That is not measured in money, or teraflops or wind tunnel hours,” the Austrian concluded.