Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur has insisted his team must be wary of how it handles expenses next year to avoid “burning” money under the budget cap.
The budget cap next year will be bumped up to $215 million, however his is largely to reflect inflation and other additional costs that will now be considered when teams log their accounts.
A new set of technical regulations will also come into play next year, and Vasseur has already warned that the early-season grid will not define the ultimate pecking order due to the role car development will play.
But the Frenchman has suggested the cost cap, rather than the tools available to the teams, will be the main consideration when it comes to developing the challengers.
“I think the driver of the introduction of upgrades won't be the capacity to develop into the wind tunnel,” Vasseur told selected media including RacingNews365.
“The driver of the introduction of upgrades will be the cost cap. It means we will have to be clever to do a good usage of the budget that we have for development and to cope with this budget to introduce upgrades.
“For sure, the sooner the better and the most important the better on this.”
Vasseur highlighted Ferrari will need to think logistically when it comes to where it opts to bring upgrades to keep costs down.
“But it's not a given that if you start to introduce four or five upgrades in the first couple of races… if you have to send a floor to Japan or to China, you are burning half of your budget on development,” he said.
“It means we will need to be clever in the plan, perhaps to develop sometimes more in the wind tunnel and to introduce in race three or four, when we are going back to Bahrain.
“It’s a question we'll have to deal with, we'll have to deal with it in the future, on the day-per-day, seeing on one end what we are getting from the wind tunnel and what is the cost of the development.
“For sure, if you have an upgrade on the flap of the front wing, it's less cost than the floor to send to China.”
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