F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Mercedes confident it can upgrade without overspending

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff is confident that the squad will be able to continue pressing on with its upgrade packages as well as its development of next year's car without inadvertently breaching F1's cost cap along the way.

The team made significant progress with new parts introduced in Monaco and Montreal, and is planning to add more upgrades in time for Austria and the British GP at the start of July.

But all this spending has to be balanced against work on next year's car or else they risk falling behind again in 2024. That's not an easy balancing act given the strict limits on team spending.

But Wolff is confident that they have things in hand and won't run the risk of overspending and being hit with penalties, as happened to rival team Red Bull last year.

"We have set up a huge organisation in our financial department of 46 people that monitors the cost cap down to the last screw," he told the media last week.

"It follows the trend of spending during all of the year, and what we've done is basically allocated resource to various projects," he explained. "We stayed below that line all year last year, and we've stayed below that line this year.

"Considering a normal development switch for next year, this is still pretty much on track. "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," he added. "But it's not that we're building stuff. It's more what are we simulating, and that is not measured in money. It's teraflops and wind tunnel hours."

Although the team has made progress with its recent upgrades, there's no question that there is more ground to recover before they will be competing for race wins and championships like the old days.

Red Bull's Max Verstappen was streets ahead of the rest last week in Montreal, while Lewis Hamilton succeeded in passing Fernando Alonso at the start only to prove unable to prevent the Aston Martin sweeping past him in the second stint.

"We struggle in the lower-speed corners particularly, and that's really where I was losing to Fernando and to Max," Hamilton reported after the end of last week's race, citing lack of traction "out of pretty much every corner".

"We've got a lot of work to do just to add rear downforce to the car and a little bit more efficiency but we're chipping away."

Despite the upgrades, Hamilton said that the current W14 "doesn't feel a huge difference to the beginning of the year."

"The characteristics of the car are very, very similar to what we had earlier on in the year," he said. "There are some elements of the car which do feel different, but it's just simply having a little bit more downforce on the car.

"It's definitely not characteristic-wise the car that's going to be able to beat the Red Bull just yet, so we've got to work on that," he added. "For next year's car we need to take a lot of these different things off and change them."

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.

Recent Posts

Komatsu: F1 teams united against Audi 2026 cost-cap offset

Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu has revealed that nine Formula 1 teams stand in opposition…

48 mins ago

Las Vegas GP: Hamilton leads Mercedes 1-2 in trouble-free FP1

Lewis Hamilton and George Russell led the field in a chilly but trouble-free first practice…

2 hours ago

2024 Las Vegas Grand Prix Free Practice 1 - Results

Full results from Free Practice 1 for the Las Vegas Grand Prix in the United…

2 hours ago

Aston Martin says performance shortfall led to Fallows exit

Aston Martin performance director Tom McCullough has shed some light on why the team’s former…

11 hours ago

FIA clamps down on plank loophole after Red Bull complaint

The FIA has issued a pivotal Technical Directive to F1 teams ahead of this weekend’s…

13 hours ago

F1 drivers blindsided by race director Wittich’s sudden exit

The abrupt removal last week of FIA race director Niels Wittich with just three races…

14 hours ago