The new regulation changes that were introduced to Formula 1 in 2022 promised closer and more exciting racing. While the competitive order still reflects the previous generation of cars with Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes still capable of winning races, the introduction of a cost cap from the 2021 season onwards should lead to more parity on performance. But while the cost cap has made it a more level-playing field, it has impacted those bigger teams as they have needed to reduce their headcount to stay under the agreed amount. AlphaTauri Team Principal Franz Tost believes this is the key reason why F1 should see a more competitive order in years to come. "The teams will come closer together, I'm convinced about this," he told media, including RacingNews365.com . "Last year the top teams still had the advantage that two years ago, they could keep all their employees until June. "This helped them to develop the new car and therefore, they came out with very, very competitive cars ahead of the rest of the field."
Tost: Cost cap will play important role in levelling competitive order
Teams like Haas have been able to make use of engineers from technical partner Ferrari to emerge as a more competitive force, with it paying off when they achieved a pole at the Brazilian Grand Prix last year. Other teams like Alpine have reduced the amount of "specialists" within their team, to make way for more "multidisciplinary" engineering talent . This aspect of the cost cap will play an important role in the years to come according to Tost. He continued: "I think this year already, this is what I always said from 2023 onwards, the cost cap will play a much more important role. "This is continuous also for 2024 and 2025. But 2026 I don't know yet because there's a completely new regulation change."
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