© Steve Etherington for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Toto Wolff says before the budget cap was implemented, Mercedes “wouldn’t even know what a front suspension costs”.
Toto Wolff recently said Mercedes would be open to building a completely new chassis in 2023, were it not for the constraints of the budget cap.
The Austrian explains how the budget cap completely changed the way his team approaches car development.
“In the past, we wouldn’t even know what a front suspension costs,” Toto said.
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“And today we need to take the purchase price of the aluminium, then factor in how much is actually the cost of the car, how much is actually the machining of it cost, how much do you need to write off from the aluminium that you don’t need, price out every bolt that goes into the suspension, the carbon that you bought out of the raw material, then cut it, put it on, what’s the energy cost of the composite room, the overhead that goes into this, and at the end comes out the product.
“It means that it’s gone so far that we have cost analysts, engineers, that need to decide whether buying that kilogram of raw material of aluminium is worth the performance gain on the other side. And that makes it so complex, and that process is so difficult and painful.
“People that should be creative only and have basically carte blanche, they can’t do it because somebody is telling them whether it’s feasible in the cost gap or not,” Wolff concluded.
