Cost cap creating 'two-tier' F1 - Vowles

Formula 1’s cost cap is creating a “two-tier championship”, widening the gap between the top four teams and the rest, according to Williams team boss James Vowles.

Vowles launched a strong, carefully crafted critique of F1’s current cost cap system - first introduced in 2021 - during the team boss press conference at the F1’s Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.

He believes Williams and the other midfield teams are caught in a “cost cap trap” and change is needed.

“First and foremost, I own the mistakes that we made this winter and we need to detach that from that question,” Vowles said when The Race asked about the prospect of any team outside the top four reaching the front of the grid in a cost cap era.

“So we have gone backwards. We had a car that was overweight. But actually, when we did the cost cap, this is way back in Covid, when we had a phone call about it - there were three key tasks that we wanted out of it.

"We wanted long-term financial sustainability. And I think in that goal, not just as we achieved it, but we've exceeded it. This business now has good investment that allows us to go on and they're businesses. They weren't businesses before 2021 at all.

“The two others though that went with it was sporting equity and effectively compression of the field. So effectively competitiveness that compressed together. Those are the three goals of cost cap. And those two have failed.

“There's a bit of statistics I was looking at about a month ago, which is the following. If I take the last 15 years of [F1], the five [years] that we've been in as cost cap, the top four teams scored 83% of the points.

“Before that, it was in the 70s, just to be clear about it. In other words, we have made the situation worse where all the rest of us are fighting over a ballpark 17% of the points.

“The number of times on the podium [outside the top four teams] used to be 10% of the time. Now it's 5% of the time. I can give you a whole bunch of statistics, but the cost cap has made it worse, not better.”

Depending exactly how you calculate, the figures Vowles gives do tally with The Race’s analysis of 2011-2025, the points and podium shares have been significantly reduced since the introduction of the cost cap in 2021.

“I'm probably unique because it's not a compliment, but I went from the best team [Mercedes] to the worst team [Williams in 2023]. I think that's fairly clear,” Vowles continued.

“What I hadn't appreciated or realised when you do that jump is just how little exists, when you're in a cost cap, I'm not spending money on the car. I'm spending millions, tens of millions, actually just on basic systems.

"So that’s just knowing where a part is in the factory. So that's not going to the car. It's not going to a front wing. It's not going to an upgrade. It's going on systems that I need to do just to do the basics.

“We're caught in a cost cap trap because if I do anything short term, and I always talk about investing in the future

“Now you understand why, if I do anything that's about this year, I will slow myself down in the future. I can't do that. We have a two-tier championship. That's not me telling you; that is just what is on the table right now in terms of point scored.

“This is where we have to come together as a business [and say] ‘that's not right in terms of what we want for the future’. We do want the ability for, if we do a good job, we should have the ability to fight for that.

“Even last year, which was a great year, the gap in points between us and P4, between us and Ferrari was 238 points [it was actually 261 points]. Like it's not a small amount. It's an absolute gulf. We were on the podium three times.

“I didn't appreciate it until I came into Williams. It really penalises you in terms of what you're doing.

"The solution isn't to take cost cap away. As I said before, we have a brilliantly financially stable sport now as the result of it, but we do need to think about what mechanisms we have in there to make sure we all playing with the same tools and the same mechanisms because today we're not.”

Alpine’s executive advisor Flavio Briatore added “I believe the idea of the cost cap is very good. But the administration we have with the cost cap is tremendous. At one point, I don't know, it makes sense to have a one budget cap, wherever is the number, [have the] drivers included.

“I believe we need to decide what can we do with the budget cap. For me, the best is put everything inside the budget cap wherever is the number.”

Vowles followed up on that, adding: ”It's a good point. That's definitely one direction to go in. The other point I forgot to make, which is relevant to this, is before the cost cap, Williams weren't spending really any money at all. So, I've - roughly speaking - tripled the expenditure.

“I don't know Flavio's numbers, but I know roughly it's about the same thing. Force India didn't have any money. Aston Martin will put in every penny they can towards it. So, it's a different environment, but still worse.

“The solution I think we need is something that anyone in this room can understand, which is either championship points linked, because it gives you the scale, or championship position linked, and a simple mechanism that allows us, over time, not next year, allows us to shrink in together.”

At that moment, Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur, sitting between Vowles and Briatore, interrupted to say “we have it on the windtunnel", referring to the aerodynamic testing restrictions, which, based on the points standings, give a sliding scale of windtunnel development time. Vowles called that “a step in the right direction”. 

Vasseur continued: “What we have to keep in mind is that before the cost cap, 2018, 2017, 2016, for sure, the business in general was much worse, but we had also five or six teams in bankruptcy, or almost in bankruptcy.

“It's not just the fact that the business is going well. It's the fact that we are sending the message that everybody can compete, right or wrong, but this is the message. This is also attracting new investors and new OEMs to the business.”

Vowles is keen for any changes to the system to still reward the best teams.

"There's a way of doing it, but it gets very complicated," Vowles said when The Race asked for specifics of what could change.

"But if I put some numbers on the table, just to build a car that had four wheels pointing the right way with some bodywork that roughly looked like a Formula 1 car is about 30% more expensive with myself compared to what I remember from a previous team.

"Inefficiency of tools, what you have on the external supply chain, there's about 100 things that add up to it.

"So you could do it that way and say, right, all of that money, fine, put that back in, you get a cost cap addition for it. It's not transparent, it's not visible to the outside world and that sort of thing concerns me.

"What you're more looking for is an amount to try and correct these issues that is not so much that you suddenly leapfrog to the front. You could have a bad year, you could do. So it should still be that someone like Mercedes, if they do a better job, they should still win a championship.

"That's not what you're impacting.What you're trying to do is dig out, honestly, 20 years in my case of underinvestment, that I can't really do in the cost cap. Let's get that back on the table."