Formula 1’s newly ratified 2021 regulations will make the top teams “dinosaurs”, that’s according to Racing Point technical director Andrew Green.
Next season Formula 1 will be working under a budget cap, and a greatly reduced one at that.
While the team bosses initially agreed to a limit of $175 million, Formula 1’s extended hiatus forced them to re-evaluate.
On Tuesday, the World Motor Sport Council ratified a cap of $145m for 2021 which will fall to $130m by 2023.
Green believes it will play to the strengths of Formula 1’s smaller teams who are used to operating with limited resources.
Asked by Formula 1’s Beyond the Grid podcast if a team needed to employ around ‘800 people’ to win races, Green replied: “If you’d have asked that question a year or so ago, you would have said yes but not now, not in the current climate and not with the regulations coming in starting in 2022.
“Those teams now are dinosaurs. You’ve got to be small, lean, efficient and I think that’s our strength.
“As far as the financial side of the regulations are concerned, they are coming to us. They’re 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 are going to have to come back down, get much closer to our level. We’ve been at this level for a very long time and I think we do a reasonable job at it.
“By no means I’m saying we’re doing the best or couldn’t do better, of course we could, but we have put systems in place and groups in place who know how to work in a cost-driven environment.”
Green also welcomed Formula 1’s decision to delay the 2021 regulation overhaul to 2022.
Instead teams will run this year’s chassis in next year’s championship while only being allowed to develop some parts of the car.
“I think it helps us,” Green said. “We’d made the decision that we were going to try and make 2020 our ‘performant’ year at the cost of 2021 at the time.
“We knew lots of other teams had set their bias a lot more towards the 2021 regulations and we made the decision with a view to where we can catch up in the 2021 regulations – we can just be fast followers.
“Now we’re in a situation where the car that we thought may only be good for one season is going to do two.”
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