Formula One is slowly reversing the historic fashion in which the teams establish a pecking order. Those with the biggest budgets, tended to win the championships but since the advent of the cost cap, all this has changed.

Mercedes remain bullish about their new 2026 power unit, with Toto Wolff referring to the team’s dominance the last time a new power unit entered the sport. This is unlikely to happen again this time around for two reasons.

Firstly, the powertrain manufacturers are now under a cost cap formula themselves. Mercedes reportedly spent over a billion dollars on the R&D for their 2014 power unit, which won eight consecutive team titles and six drivers’ championships for Lewis Hamilton.

 

 

 

F1 trying to end dominance

Secondly, much of the current hybrid technology is better understood over a decade on and so the 2026 F1 power unit is not exactly re-inventing the wheel.

Power unit manufacturers also are restricted to the amount of bench testing time they can use and need to find a threefold increase in the electrical side of the unit as from 2026 the power will be split ICE 50% and Electrical unit 50%.

This huge hike in demand from the electrical side of the motor has been questioned by some, with Christian Horner warning of ‘Frankenstein cars’ where the internal combustion engine merely serves as a power generator for the electrical motor.

It seems to have been forever, F1 has its midfield and back of the grid teams which in all reality rarely ever win even a single Grand Prix. Yet the new era of Liberty media’s F1 is making big steps to change all of this.

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V-CARB get desperately needed facility upgrade

Teams are now also restricted in how much they can spend on improving their facilities, with allowances available to the smaller teams to play ‘catch up.’ Whether this will ever truly level the playing field is yet to be seen, but V-CARB are excited about their new facilities in Milton Keynes.

The Red Bull energy drinks organisation bought the Minardi F1 team back in 2005 from Paul Stoddart who had criteria to decide amongst the 41 offers he received. He demanded a significant cash injection be made into the team and it remain based in Faenza, Italy for an agreed number of years.

Fans of Minardi were upset and started petitions to retain the historic name, but the team became the Red Bull ‘rookie’ plaything named less mysteriously Toro Rosso. Two decades on the covenant clauses demanded by Stoppard had elapsed and the Faenza based team is slowly shifting its operations to Milton Keynes.

The Red Bull junior team has for some time had a UK base in Bisceter which they took possession of some fifteen yers ago – while retaining production and assembly in Faenza. “Now the facility is simply not good enough,” V-CARB boss Laurent Mekies tells Motorsport Week. “We are building something at an incredible standard in Milton Keynes for our people.”

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Faenza ultimately to close

“For sure it’s going to be instrumental in working in better conditions, being even more attractive on the job market for the next challenges.” Mekies compares the “good” headquarters in Faenza but refers to the new facilities at Milton Keynes as “excellent.”

As other F1 teams have learned when putting all their operations under one roof, communication and productivity improves significantly and Red Bull on the quiet is going to eventually close the Italy base. The new facilities Mekies says are  

“a must in that path to challenge the bigger guys.”

Ahead of expected upgrades, Mekies was talking back in august about about a 2024 target for the team to finish “top of the midfield”  but now it appears having scented a new lease of life, Mekies wants much more.

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Tough ask challenging F1’s top 4

I think you always want more in Formula 1,” he says.“If you prove yourself, you can be P6. If tomorrow you can prove yourself, you can be P5. You will always want more.

“So your five-year span is to get as close as you can from the top. Also, if you want to hire the really good guys and girls, you will need to have that ambition anyway.”

McLaren, Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes have the front four rows of the grid mostly locked out as the constructors’ table represents. Aston Martin in fifth are on 86 points while Mercedes ahead in fourth are on 329. Being Aston Martin are V-CARB with 34 points after eighteen races, proving how difficult its is for the smaller teams to break into the points in a Grand Prix.

RB’s CEO Peter Bayer is hopeful V-CARB can challenge the top five in the near future, though at present Haas and Williams are closing the gap, rather than RB extending it.

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Williams and Haas catching V-CARB

“Now, [with new facilties] we might not be able to fight for the top one, two, three realistically,” Bayer explained to Motorsport Week. Yet the team has failed to score since before the summer break and in those four race weekends Haas has scored three times and Williams twice.

In that time Williams have claimed the most points of the three and are bullish about their chances in the remaining six events. Yet Bayer believes the relentless progress made by V-CARB will see incremental progress up the ladder from bottom to top of the grid.

“I think to be there, P6, sniffing to P5, and then, getting hungry for P4, I think that needs to be the ambition, mixing it with that young, authentic, cool spirit,” he said.

Of course having the ambition to move an F1 team forward is a must, but all are attempting the same feat with Alpine recently having to tear up its five year ‘project mountain climb’ and now close its power unit operation in France which has powered the fourth most F1 wins in history.

V-CARB has expertise in its sister team which should be helpful, but the road ahead to cracking even the top four – is long.

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Latest F1 historic venue on hopefully; comeback

Formula One has relentlessly pressed for new venues to join the F1 calendar over the past two decades and the sport can truly now claim to be global. One continent is yet to host a Grand Prix weekend in modern times and Lewis Hamilton has being pushing for an African Grand Prix.

South Africa looked set to return to F1 after a 30 years absence, but greed amongst the promoters together with the FIA declaring in June 2023, that the South African Grand Prix would not return to the F1 calendar for the near future due to the country’s stance on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Of course the number of events held each year has grown over time, but the arrival of a swathe of new F1 venues threatens the survival of some of the more traditional European heartland occasions… READ MORE