Mattia Binotto has said that the approach to upgrades introduced throughout the year will be quite different to seasons past, in light of the tightened budget cap for 2022. F1 is in its second year since the introduction of financial regulations, aimed at curbing the spending of the teams. For 2022, teams are only permitted $140 million for car and performance-related spend, and the requirement for more cautious budgeting has resulted in many being far more cautious about introducing updates to their cars. After the first four races of the campaign, Ferrari are one of the teams yet to introduce any sort of significant update to their F1-75 - the Scuderia are fundamentally running the same car that first peeled out onto the track in Barcelona back in February's pre-season test.
Binotto: Nothing has changed compared to previous seasons
Upgrades are expected for the Spanish Grand Prix later in May, and Binotto believes that there is no reason for panicking about rushing through new parts at this stage of the season. "We are only at race four," he told media, including RacingNews365.com , after the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix weekend. "If I look at the past seasons as well, I don't think that at race four there were many developments brought to cars. "If I look at our competitors, [some] already brought some developments – some of them in testing, some of them [at Imola], and some, maybe small, developments from race one to race four, so I don't think that, so far, it has changed much compared to the past."
Binotto points to "prescriptive" regulations
The Ferrari team boss has also highlighted the implications of the cost cap, saying that the budget restricts spending to the point of not being able to introduce lots of updates. "[The budget caps means] we certainly need to pay attention to it and we cannot simply drop the developments at each single race," Binotto said. Additionally, despite the newness of the technical regulations, Binotto feels the returns on the upgrades might not be as big as may have been initially expected. "I think there is the fact that the regulations, the way [they are], are somehow prescribed and we always said [they're] quite prescriptive regulations," he explained. "I think there is quite a lot of freedom in choosing the overall concept or architecture and that's the reason why we can see quite different cars. But, by the time you have chosen it, how much you can change on the front wing, or the rear wing, the bodywork – it's very little. "I think that, as teams, because we've got a budget cap in place, we are simply trying to make sure that, by the time we are bringing a package, it's a proper one. And maybe, to do that, we simply take a few more races."
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