Racing Point Technical Director Andrew Green has likened the ‘big three’ Formula 1 teams to dinosaurs, saying they will need to adapt to a new world if they’re to survive.
Green believes the era of big money and big teams is over now that F1 has finally passed a budget cap of $145 million, which will come into force for the 2021 season and beyond, gradually decreasing each year.
The cap means the likes of Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari, which employ almost double the number of staff of the likes of Racing Point and its smaller rivals, will have to massively downsize to meet the new rules.
Green says that alone will give the smaller teams an advantage as they already know how to operate on a smaller budget and believes it will allow them to finally compete on a level-playing field.
“I think those teams now are dinosaurs; you’ve got to be small, lean, efficient, and I think that’s our strength,” he told the official Formula 1 podcast, Beyond the Grid.
“As far as the financial side of the regulations are concerned, I think they’re coming [towards] us.
“They’re [the new rules] definitely going to allow us to be able to compete with what used to be big teams, because they can’t be big teams anymore. They’re going to have to come back down, and get much closer to our level.”
Racing Point – which will become Aston Martin Racing next year – is well placed to take advantage of the new rules.
“We’ve been doing it [operating efficiently] for years,” added Green. “We’ve been at this level for a very long time, and I think we do a reasonable job at it. By no means am I saying we do the best or couldn’t do better, of course we could.
“But we have been doing it a long time and I think we’ve put systems in place and groups in place who know how to work in a cost-driven environment, and I think that’s going to help us.”
The cost-cap will come in for ’21 and will start at $145m – down from an initial figure of $175m – before dropping to $130m in ’22 and then $125m in ’23.
It was meant to coincide with new technical regulations, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the rules overhaul has been pushed back to ’22.
