Mercedes has had to put a stop to its development efforts for the current Formula 1 season, with repair costs from a series of recent crashes limiting what’s left of its budget. The team has seen expenses rise after several high-impact incidents, including Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s crash in Monza and George Russell’s accidents in Austin qualifying and Mexico practice.
The repair bill has been especially steep, with Russell’s Mexico crash alone requiring a new chassis. Under the Formula 1 cost cap, Mercedes has no remaining budget for further upgrades, a situation team principal Toto Wolff described as complex. “In the cost cap landscape, it is a tricky situation,” Wolff stated.
“These three shunts put us on the back foot, and certainly the one that happened [on Friday in Mexico] was massive. We had to opt for a completely new chassis and that is a tremendous hit in the cost cap.”
Despite planning two new floors for Brazil, Mercedes has now exhausted its development resources. “We probably have to dial down on what we put on the car,” Wolff admitted.
“So we’ll be having two upgrade packages in Brazil, two floors, but that’s basically it. There’s nothing else that’s going to come.”
The team also has to be strategic with parts, adapting to the constraints of a zero-budget situation for future updates. “We have certain limitation on parts where we need to be creative how we’re managing them,” Wolff said, “And certainly, there is an impact on how many development parts we can put on the car, because the answer is zero.”
Despite financial constraints, Mercedes has no intention of restraining drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell from fighting on track. Wolff expressed confidence in their experience, saying, “They are so good and so experienced that we allow the racing. There was not a feeling where I thought it’s getting a bit hairy.”
The team, however, did communicate with Russell during the Mexico race, advising him to be cautious in one defensive move. “I think we made the call to George at the end, where it was clear that Lewis was the faster car,” Wolff explained, “to maybe [tell him] that one defence on the straight was a bit of a late move. But I don’t have any doubts in the two.”
In Brazil, Mercedes will have two floors available, including a repaired one from Austin. The team remains open to input from both drivers on which configuration to use. “I’m always open-minded about what the drivers think,” Wolff added.
“If I’m certain that George is going to go for the new, Lewis may want to back-to-back the old floor now in Brazil. We will certainly talk with him and see what his preference is.”
With concerns that recent upgrades might have disrupted car balance, Mercedes is interested to see if any aerodynamic issues could be responsible for the incidents.
“There may be something in the aero update package that causes something that we don’t understand.
“These cars are so on the knife’s edge that it will be an interesting experiment in Brazil, to see whether there is a high-speed instability or a low-speed factor.”
