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Red Bull driver Sergio Perez and Mercedes share a similar problem at the end of a long Formula 1 season: both parties are feeling the impact that several incidents have had on development capacity.
This year F1 teams have to navigate 24 races, the longest season in the world championship’s history, within the budget cap.
That stands at a baseline figure of $135million although the real number is actually higher once the total number of races and other variables such as inflation are factored in.
All teams bake an allowance for repairs/replacement parts into their spending as they anticipate a certain amount of attrition over the year, whether that is from crashes or just the usual wear and tear of components.
The more incidents a team suffers, the more compromises they will need to make. Towards the end of F1’s penultimate triple-header, Perez and his team’s rival Mercedes have been detailing the impact their misfortune has had.
Red Bull brought a new floor to the United States that is designed to help the car work better at high speed and also under braking, and reportedly produced more downforce than initially predicted.
Although that hasn’t helped Max Verstappen end his grand prix win drought he did score victory in the sprint race in the US and qualified on the front row at the next race in Mexico.
But Perez doesn’t have the floor. He is using a repaired, older specification – as he has done previously this season – which is believed to be for cost reasons.
“No, we don’t have it at the moment,” Perez confirmed when asked by The Race if the latest floor would be on his car in Brazil this week.
“Hopefully for Vegas, now that there will be a little bit more time, I will have it.”
Perez is widely believed to have suffered the most accident damage of any driver this season. He crashed heavily at the start of the Monaco Grand Prix, in Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying and at the end of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Last weekend he picked up extensive damage to the floor and sidepod in a clash with RB driver Liam Lawson, who is gunning for his Red Bull drive in 2025.
Asked if the missing upgrade had played into the problems he’s been experiencing with the car’s instability, Perez said: “Well, there’s something in it. Also a bit of weight. We’re carrying a little bit of weight and so on.
“It’s not ideal but obviously the team is doing the best they can. We’ve been affected with so many incidents for now, so the team is pushing flat out.”
MERCEDES’ 'TREMENDOUS HIT'
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff admitted after last weekend's Mexican Grand Prix that it has taken "a tremendous hit in the cost cap" after the recent run of accidents.
That means that there will be no further development parts put on the car after this weekend’s Brazilian Grand Prix, and need to be “creative” in how they manage parts to the end of the season to minimise spending on spares.
George Russell's FP2 shunt in Mexico was particularly problematic as it resulted in a chassis change and the introduction of a brand-new monocoque. Although that chassis clearly existed, Mercedes could have avoided including it in its cost cap accounting for 2024 had it not been used - creating a saving of hundreds of thousands of dollars that could have been spent elsewhere.
Russell also crashed at Turn 19 in qualifying at Austin, while his car also took a hit at Monza when Kimi Antonelli crashed at Parabolica in FP1. Wolff cited those as causing problems in terms of the cost cap.
"In cost cap land, that is a tricky situation," he said when asked by The Race about the effect of the run of crashes. "These three shunts put us on the backfoot, and certainly the one that happened [on Friday in Mexico] was massive. We had to opt for a completely new chassis.
"That is a tremendous hit in the cost cap and we probably have to dial down on what we put on the car.
“We have certain limitation on parts where we need to be creative [in] how we're managing this. And certainly there is an impact on how many development parts we can put on the car, because the answer is zero."
Russell confirmed at Interlagos on Thursday that the floor he damaged in Austin has now been repaired, with both drivers able to run the upgraded floor. Since Sunday at Austin, the Mercedes team had been split with Russell running an old specification and Hamilton the new.
"We managed to get the floor I damaged in Austin prepared, so we're both going to be on the updated floor," said Russell. "We've got a small difference in specification as a bit of a trial, but it's not an update as such.
“It's just in the realms of normal aerodynamic testing."
