Horner: Red Bull must be cautious in 2022

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner has warned that the team will have to be particularly targeted with its resource investment and development plan for the coming season as it looks ahead to the introduction of new Formula 1 rules for 2022.

The new rules place a cost cap on all teams, but will have a particularly large impact on the larger outfits such as Red Bull which have invested heavily to compete with the likes of Mercedes, and Horner said this made their development programme for the next seasons all the more challenging, according to Auto Motor und Sport.

"It is already difficult enough to make the jump for 2022. And it is made even worse by the budget cap that affects Mercedes and Ferrari as well as us. You have to exercise extreme caution where you invest your money," he said.

"There is no more the luxury of investing your money in two programs, working in parallel for 2021 and 2022. It will be exciting to see what strategies the teams are driving. The effect on next year's car is much greater than usual because we are really starting from scratch."

The changes have also impacted the long term thinking of the team, Horner said, as it had forced them to adapt to a completely new paradigm for investment with a much tighter budget.

"We are racers from top to bottom in the team. The answer can only be: You have to be as efficient as you are in everything you do this year as possible and see 2022 as a challenge where you can't give anything away," he said.

"The decision-making process on how to distribute your resources is a completely new dimension."