Aston Martin: F1 Cost Cap Forces Rivals ‘to Do Things They Are Not Used to Doing’

F1 has for long seen a disparity between budgets across the teams on the grid that has dictated the domination of a few teams. To tackle the problem, F1 had announced that the 2021 season will see a cost cap of $145 million. This will further reduce to $140 million for 2022 and $135 million for 2023 onwards.

Aston Martin F1’s team boss, Otmar Szafnauer, explained how the new luxury racing team will benefit from the budget ceiling. He believes that the cost caps will scale down the domination of F1 behemoths like Mercedes, Ferrari, and Red Bull and will benefit his team.

“I believe they have constraints already, which means they will have to do things differently, things that they are not used to doing,” said Szafnauer on the effect of cost cap on the big teams.

“I think that, in itself, will give us the advantage because we don’t have to do those types of things. An advantage over where we were last year, when compared to the non-cap cost era.

“I think we would be better off,” he further explained.

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Aston Martin is well under the cost cap, claims Szafnauer

Aston Martin’s involvement with Racing Point has significantly increased the team’s budget going into the 2021 season. However, Szafnauer clarified that the team’s budget is still within the cost cap amount.

“This season our budget although has significantly increased from the time we were Force India and Racing Point. We have much more budget now, much more resource. We’re still well within the cost cap. So from a cost cap perspective, we are not constrained,” he said.

Racing Point finished the 2020 season at an impressive P4 position when compared to a P7 finish in the season before. The team is looking forward to continuing the momentum and cracking the top-three finish that they missed out on, losing to McLaren by just seven points.

Do you believe Aston Martin will get back at McLaren and snatch a top-3 finish in 2021?