Williams boss ambitious rule change crusade 'blocked' by rival F1 team

Williams boss James Vowles' attempts to modify the F1 cost cap regulations appear to have failed after a key target rejected his idea.

Vowles is pushing for a tweak to the cost cap system, which imposes a maximum flat rate of spending on every team on the grid, and is currently set at $215 million USD for 2026. 

The Williams chief is not seeking an abolition of the cost cap, but rather the creation of a sliding scale where teams who finish lower down the constructors' standings have more budget available over the top four teams to allow them to catch up to the leading squads.

A similar sliding scale has been used for F1's aerodynamic testing, with teams who finish higher in the constructors' receiving less wind-tunnel and CFD time than those who finish lower down the standings. 

Vowles is keen to see the changes brought into grand prix racing for 2027 to allow them to have enough time to bed in for the expected 2030 or 2031 regulation changes, and to achieve this, he requires backing from six of the 11 teams on the grid. 

If this threshold is not met, Vowles could try again in 2028 when only four teams would need to vote in favour. 

Of the remaining 10 squads, there is an even split with Alpine, Aston Martin, Audi, and Cadillac all believed to be in favour of the change, whilst McLaren, Mercedes, Ferrari, and Red Bull are not in favour. 

This leaves Haas and Racing Bulls as targets for Vowles to reach the magical six, including his own vote, but Haas is also believed not to be in favour, with Racing Bulls usually voting with Red Bull over such matters.

However, Vowles was optimistic that Racing Bulls could be swayed ahead of a vote at the F1 Commission meeting in November. 

"There are two approaches," Vowles began to media, including RacingNews365, when asked about the Racing Bulls position.

"You can either bring it to the regs next year, or you can bring it to the regs the year after, which is only four votes. Because actually your investment takes a period of time to kick in anyway. 

"My idea is to bring it in next year, so you know what you're dealing with. But there is a way to deal with it with a number of votes that's on the table at the moment. Answering that question, though, I actually do think Red Bull is sensible about this. 

"They have an opportunity to invest in their sister team. The values are going up. Why wouldn't you want it to be more competitive, with more tools available to you? But that exact conversation hasn't been had yet."

[Article continues below with Racing Bulls' reply]

Racing Bulls reply to Williams and Vowles

However, despite Vowles' optimism, when the question was put to Racing Bulls' chief Alan Permane, he rejected supporting the changes to the cost cap. 

"The aero rules, the wind tunnel rules, the ATR stuff, it just allows a little tweak," Permane explained.

"And of course, as you have longer regulation cycles, the teams close up, and drivers close up, and I think that's definitely something we want.

"I don't think we would support a wholesale change to the cost cap rules to start being able to spend huge amounts more money because I think it's served us very well for the - I don't know how many years we're into it now - six years we're into it now. 

"I think it's served Formula 1 very, very well. 

"And I think maybe there are tweaks to do, for sure. But if you want to spend a whole lot of money on CapEx, you can. The mechanism's in there. 

"So if James wants to go and spend $100 million on something, he can do that. You just pay it off over X number of years. So, the mechanism is already there."