Landmark F1 rule change branded a FAILURE by former team chief

Former Formula 1 team boss Otmar Szafnauer has slammed the cost cap measures in the sport for creating a divided grid.

First introduced to the sport in 2021, the cost cap measures limited the teams on the grid to a spending budget of $145 million, with the aim of bringing the grid closer together.

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While the teams at the front and the back are closer than ever before, the 2024 season has seen an interesting split.

Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes and Aston Martin have emerged as the top five teams and look to have broken away from the rest of the field as they look set to lock out most of the points this season.

Szafnauer highlights cost cap 'inequities'

This divide has prompted speculation as to what has caused this, and speaking at the launch event of his new itinerary management app EventR, former Alpine and Aston Martin boss Szafnauer claims this has happened due to ‘inequities’ present in the cost cap.

Asked why he thinks the grid has split, the American responded: “There's a couple of areas I can think of.

“One, which I experienced, is there are some teams that have done a better job at cost cap structure. They can spend $10-15 million more than some others, and you have to remember this is at the margin of performance.

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“Say that $15 million more that you've got, because of the way you organised yourself, you can buy more talent, or you can do other experiments that the other guys cannot do.

“Plus, although there's an OpEx (Operating Expenditure) and a CapEx (Capital Expenditure) cost cap, I think on the CapEx side, we inadvertently froze some inequities.

“There are some tools that the bigger teams have, and that the little ones are now trying to catch up and gain. And it takes time, because it was like $36 million over four years or something.

“I remember we faced this at Alpine. We couldn't buy what we wanted to buy, we had to do it over time. And the big teams, when they knew the cost cap was coming, because they had the money, they just bought all the stuff [there and then].”

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