On the face of it, things don’t look good for Lewis Hamilton’s title challenge after eight rounds of the 2021 season.
By contrast, Red Bull has been pushing hard with its own development, making steps with both its aerodynamic package and its Honda engine at the last two rounds.
Had Formula One not been forced to find ways to save money as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, this year would have seen the introduction of a brand new set of regulations and a grid of new-look F1 cars.
Form a cost saving point of view, the decision to delay the new rules happily coincided with the introduction of a budget cap for 2021, meaning the spending of every team on the grid is now capped at $145 million for the year.
This was a no-brainer as the 2020 car was clearly quick enough to win the championship without a huge amount of development and, as part of the delay in the new rules, teams were forbidden to work on aerodynamic development of the all-new car for 2022.
The lack of development reared its head as a potential safety issue with three failures during the 2020 British Grand Prix, and so the FIA decided to peg back the development of all teams by tweaking the aero rules for 2021.
The changes for 2021 were relatively crude in their nature, cutting a chunk out of the floor and simplifying complex aerodynamic devices around barge boards and rear brake ducts, and caused a stink during testing earlier this year when it appeared to hit the design philosophies of Mercedes and Aston Martin more than the rest of the field.
But Mercedes stuck to its original plan and turned its attention to better understanding why its 2021 car was suddenly struggling rather than work on a major upgrade package, which probably wouldn’t have provided a complete fix anyway.
Nevertheless, under no circumstances was Mercedes willing to sacrifice the development of its 2022 project for short-term gains in 2021.
“It is a very rational decision — the upgrades you bring wouldn’t close the aerodynamic deficit of the magnitude the aero regs for 2021 cost us, fact.
What’s more, F1 introduced a sliding scale of aerodynamic testing time into the regulations this year, which gives a team more development time in the wind tunnel and more time using CFD tools the lower it is down the order.
As Wolff pointed out, Red Bull will also have to turn its focus entirely to 2022 at some stage this year, but it seems its priorities are slightly different.
As a result, it’s easy to see why Red Bull would be willing to put more on the line in 2021, even if it means sacrificing 2022 to some extent.
Despite Red Bull’s four straight victories, the championship is still very close.
The Red Bull Ring clearly suits the Red Bull car, and the vans of upgrades that were seen arriving outside the Red Bull garage over the weekend suggest the team put extra emphasis on winning the double header at its home circuit.
Hamilton added: “I’m not going to question the team’s logic and how they got through with their process.
“We’re down on a few areas.