© LAT Images for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd
The big crash between George Russell and Valtteri Bottas almost completely wrecked Mercedes’ car. With the new cost cap, the repairs could eat away at the team’s budget.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff was definitely not amused by the big crash that happened between George Russell and Valtteri Bottas at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, as it meant the team’s car got almost completely destroyed.
With Formula 1 teams allowed to spend $145 million throughout 2021, due to a newly instituted spending cap, any unexpected damage to the cars eats away at the teams’ budgets and prevents them from spending more on updates for current cars and the development of next year’s challengers.
“It was a great crash, our car is a wreck,” Wolff said after the race.
“In an environment where there is a cost cap this is certainly not what we needed. It will probably end up limiting the updates we are able to do.
“We are very close to the limit as regards the cost ceiling and what we have always feared is the complete destruction of a machine.
“Now this will not have been exactly a total demolition of the car, but almost, and this is not something we wanted.“
Mercedes Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin says the team still needs to evaluate the damage on Bottas’ car so that they can determine if anything can be salvaged.
“It is extensive, and whether or not there’s any damage on the power unit side is one of the things that we need to check carefully,” Shovlin explained.
“Because he didn’t finish the race, the gearbox isn’t a concern. But the new factor for us this year is that we’re all cost capped. This sort of damage isn’t really in the plan.
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“Our drivers have been incredibly good at getting through seasons without breaking much in recent years, and certainly in terms of the bill in terms of carbon work and metal work will be very extensive from that.
“So we’ll go through and look at what we can actually salvage, and get the cars back together for Portimao. But it is quite a concern when you have these sort of incidents.”
The Briton says that, under the budget cap, the teams are working under the assumption that the car parts will complete their life cycle, so these kinds of events put a wrench in their calculations.
“If you have a series of these kind of large accidents that are doing significant damage – and this has been bad for us, because we’ve had a front wing with Lewis [Hamilton] as well – then that will definitely exceed our allocation for what we have available to spend on the parts.
“In an ideal world, you run them to life, you don’t break them, anything that you do break, hopefully it’s end of life or something that is about to be obsolete.
“But that is definitely not the case here. So it is really a factor of the cost cap, and the money has got to come from somewhere. Ultimately if it becomes a big problem, it can start to hit your development budget.
“So we do need to be mindful of that moving forward,” concluded Shovlin.
