Mercedes director Toto Wolff revealed that his team had come “very close” to exceeding the budget ceiling of Formula 1 in 2024. The cause? Several very costly accidents at the end of the season.
Introduced in 2021, this budget cap limits team spending to guarantee a certain fairness in the championship. In 2024, the FIA had set this limit at $135 million per team. An official report will be published later in the year to confirm compliance with this rule by the ten teams entered last season.
Repairs that weighed on the budget
Toto Wolff assured that Mercedes remained within the imposed limits, but only narrowly, after several incidents that occurred in the middle and end of the season. Among them, Kimi Antonelli was the victim of a serious off-track accident at Monza, at the Parabolica, while George Russell was involved in two major accidents, one on the Circuit of the Americas, the other in Mexico , particularly violent.
These incidents severely dented the team's financial resources, to the point that Mercedes found itself with only one wing specification at one point in the season. A constraint which clearly limited the technical developments and the competitiveness of the team at the end of the year. As a reminder, Mercedes finished the season in fourth place in the constructors' standings, 131 units behind Red Bull (third).
“It’s very tight. You can’t build up a big margin,” Toto Wolff told Auto Motor und Sport. “It’s more about overspending at the start of the year, then saving.”
“At the end of the year, we had to do without some aerodynamic and mechanical improvements because there was simply no more money to produce the corresponding parts.”
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“Accidents at the end of the season really put you in difficulty. Kimi [Antonelli] in Monza, George [Russell] in Austin and Mexico. At one point we only had one set of a certain type of fin.”
“In Mexico we couldn't go back to the old aerodynamic specification because there were no spare parts available. There was no money left within the cost to buy new ones.”
Although Mercedes has almost exceeded the cost ceiling, Wolff remains in favor of the budgeting system.
“Absolutely,” concluded the Austrian. “Because it allowed the teams to be profitable and therefore the sport to be sustainable.”
